


Moments In Time

by CaptainDeryn



Category: The Lord of the Rings Online
Genre: F/M, Fictober 2019, Gen, Halloween Shenanigans, Prompts will range from fluff to angst, chapter warnings vary from chapter to chapter, fictober19, two different pairings at different points in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-09 10:56:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 22,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20852297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainDeryn/pseuds/CaptainDeryn
Summary: A collection of Fictober 2019 prompts revolving around my human warrior and elven minstrel, separately, together, and all things in between.





	1. Day 1: The Prancing Pony

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is my first time in a long while writing for a rather obscure fandom so any feedback is wholly appreciated! 
> 
> Come shout at me over on tumblr (captainderyn) if you'd like <3

**Prompt number: 1.“It will be fun, trust me.” **

**Fandom: LOTRO**

**Rating: **Gen****

**Warnings/Tags: None (there’s a bit of suggestiveness here, but nothing explicit)**

—

Bree was an odd place when compared too closely to Rivendell. The halls didn’t glow with merriment and light--though there was _much _merriment on this particular night, spilling drunkenly into the streets in celebration of something he was not privvy to know. 

_Yávië, _or Blooting (A truly ridiculous name is he could have any opinion on the matter, which he could not), as Wulfwryn had mercilessly corrected him on, was settling into stride and a cool evening’s breeze blew stray leaves across the cobblestones. The very same breeze pushed the old wooden sign, charmingly carved in the shape of a rearing white horse, hanging above a tavern door back and forth. 

‘_C’mon, it will be fun!’ _Wulfwryn had told him at every turn from the Trollshaws_. ‘Trestlebridge is right on the other side of Breeland, it won’t be a delay at all!’_

While he had no qualms about the breath--truly he was tired of the mundane travels, of sleeping on the ground as the nights got colder, or the endless repetition of righting the evil things that seemed to crawl out of the shadows--he wasn’t certain Wulfwryn’s idea was wholly sound as she seized his hand and pulled him up the stairs. 

Tumbling through the door into the inn he was met with a cacophony of noise. Patrons jeered and cheered to the clanking of mugs of drink, on the table against the wall two bards perched to strum and warble out their tunes. 

It would be far more familiar to join the bards, pull out his own lute and play. But elven minstrel music would hardly be the jaunty verses that the patrons swayed and shouted along to. He was far out of his element here in Bree.

“Don’t worry,” Wulfwryn’s words were warm against his ear when she tilted her chin up. He imagined her eyes followed his, reading his thoughts like an open book. And twisted them in the most wicked ways that made a shiver of a promise draw down his spine. “You can play your music for me later tonight.” 

Oh he had no doubt, nevertheless a smirk pulled at the corner of his lips as he turned his cheek to her. “Would it not be easy to do so now?” 

“Oh, _Raenor,” _She hummed in thought, her shoulders worming beneath the straps of his pack quickly enough that he didn’t catch her until she’d already divested his shoulders of the weight, plopping it on the floorboards near the wall. He scrunched his nose at the shameless mischief in her eyes. It earned him a stuck out tongue in the first place. “Tempting, but no. It’s going to be fun, trust me.” 

“For _you_.” he teased, relenting when she wrapped his wrist in her calloused fingers again and tugged him down onto an empty bench. She sidled close, raising a hand to call for two pints of ale, quirking a brow at him in the process. 

“Such little faith...I can make it quite enjoyable for you too. If you stop being so dour.” 

“I am _not_ dour.” 

Her acknowledgement wasn’t wholly believing as she nudged his shoulder with a shining smile. “Well then just _trust me.” _

He truly didn’t have a choice. 


	2. Day 2: The Lone Lands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 2. “Just follow me, I know the area.”   
Fandom: LOTRO  
Rating: Gen  
Warnings/Tags: N/A

—

“Are you sure that we are going in the right direction?” Raenor arced a brow, taking in the brittle grass and ragged hills rising around them. Craban fluttered in the shadows and wolves coated in matted, bloodstained fur rustled the dry weeds. 

They hadn’t seen any sign of anything, or anyone, for the past several hours outside of the packs of orcs and wargs alike. Wulfwryn had murmured vehemently about them breeding like fleas, that she had waded through too many of the wretched beasts for them to have already returned. He had tastefully ignored it; some battles were left untold. 

Especially since the woman in question had been decidedly unhappy about his position riding next to her, scowling ahead for most of the journey already. It had been the subject of his thoughts in the long periods of mundane trails: a small spark stolen in moonlit groves and lantern-lit alcoves had lit between them in Rivendell and she had been all the happier to fall into him, and apart beneath him, in the nights they had camped. 

Just as her attitude had shifted, so did the land the moment they passed over the Last Bridge. As they rode the land became more and more parched, the aching for rain that never seemed to come. In the distance sickly blackened-green clouds roiled and only upon pressing did Wulfwryn growl that ghouls and cruel spirits haunted the ruins there. That her blade had felled their leaders, but the corruption still held its fowl claws firmly in the land. 

In the back of his mind, rationality suggested that perhaps he should stop pressing for the details that had brought her to Rivendell. All that seemed to remain was grief, pain, and a need to forget. He had seen it in her eyes, even if she had tried to shadow it away. It wouldn’t do to make an enemy of his traveling partner as they followed the evils of the Cargûl and Skorgrim; they needed to have each other’s backs, not knives at each other’s throats.

“Just follow me, I know the area.” Wulfwryn looked over her shoulder, eyes shadowed beneath the hooded cloak she had drawn up in the evening’s cooling air. “Ost Guruth won’t be far from here, we’ll stop for the night once we reach the safety of the fortress.” 

At the minimum her navigational skills didn’t falter, leading them to the fortress of the Eglain just as the last lingers of dusk faded into the inky, star splattered sky. 

The fortress was more ruin than anything defensible, the stone worn down by winds and sand, sheltered more with walls than tents for all but the most important or needy of its inhabitants. 

Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised him when later, when all eyes were off of them, their horses stabled and their packs shucked, Wulfwryn tugged him to her, her hands sliding up his neck to cup his jaw. 

“Don’t ask me anything,” she pleaded in the thin space between them. “Can we just...?” 

Forget the journey ahead? Forget the journey they’d already put behind their feet; the losses they had suffered along the way? The blood that stained their hands, the lives they had been ripped from? 

Letting his hands slide into her hair, pulling at the pins that held it until the thick braid fell down her back, twining and twisting until the strands fell loose between his fingers, he closed the sliver between them. “Absolutely.” 

It was far easier to let go than it was to fight the current. Perhaps one day they would dig their heels in and stride upstream. Just not today. 


	3. Day 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 3. “Now? Now you listen to me?” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen/T
> 
> Warnings/Tags: mentions of injury

—

Fighting alongside a warrior at any given time was a harrowing experience, this Raenor learned within the first few weeks of travel with her. 

Wulfwryn was ruthless, viewing herself as more an invincible shield to him than a perfectly mortal human, claiming that her armor would protect her far more than Raenor’s magic could. While in some regards she wasn’t wrong, it was hardly an excuse to throw herself into the packs of enemies they met as if she intended to draw them all to her blade and fell them one by one. 

Well, perhaps that was her entire intention. No matter what Raenor suggested, asked, or shouted, it always seemed to be her plan. Maybe it was from months of fighting alone, maybe it was some ridiculous urge to protect him, as the dubbed ‘healer’ of their duo. Maybe it was an honor task he was not privy to knowing. 

It was infuriating. It wasn’t about letting him fight; in fact having his space unimpeded by direct combat lent itself well to allowing him to weave spells of defense, offense, and protection for himself and Wulfwryn both. Instead it was about her own self preservation--it wouldn’t do them much good to travel as a pair if one half was dead. They weren’t trust traveling together to quell any loneliness; both of their skills and understandings were needed if they were going have any manner of success across their journey. Elrond had told Raenor that himself, and Raenor wasn’t going to question the lord of the Last Homely House. 

When he asked her, in a healer’s tone, to let him take care of the fighting after tending to a minor injury--one that would stay minor if she followed directions--he wasn’t sure what possessed him to think she would listen. Trying to tell the warrior to do something almost guaranteed she would do the opposite if she thought it was the better course of action. 

Passing through the Northern horse-fields of Bree, strangely empty of their equine namesake, a band of orcs caught their sent. When outriding them had offered them no luck, only serving to tire their own mounts as the orcs steadily pursued them like hunting wolves, they were left with a fight as their only escape. 

“Stay near me,” he told her, catching her wince as she’d lifted her sword and shield. “You have yet to repair your armor.” 

It was rather funny, truly, that he’d expected that to work. 

Preoccupied with a vile smelling, snarling orc--one of the few remaining, the others felled to his magic and knives and Wulfwryn’s blade--he didn’t hear the beast coming up behind him. He only felt the weight of Wulfwryn’s armored body slam him aside and heard the buckling crunch of the very same armor. 

When he stumbled around she had brought the orc that had almost caught his back unawares down, sending the other scrambling away until a shouted incantation sent the creature shrieking to the ground. 

“Wulfwryn!” sunken to her knees, she looked up at him as he rushed over, wheezing out a chuckle at the worry that must’ve been etched across his face. 

“It was my armor,” she hissed out a breath as he helped her to her feet, leader her over to one of the fence posts to lean her against. “It’s weapon must’ve caught the weakened point of my armor.” 

He grumbled softly, hand pressing against the buckled metal plate in question. “You’re a particular style of idiot I’ve not met before. Take this off.” 

“Yes sir,” her laugh was breathy, a line forming between her brows even as she started to toy with the buckles. 

It very near made his eyes roll to the sky. Of course the removal of her armor would be the one time she would comply without question.“Really, now? Now is the one time you listen to me?” 

“Only because you asked me so nicely,” Setting aside her breastplate she let her head thump back against the fence post, drawing in as deep a breath as she could manage. That she could do that at least was as good a sign as any for him. 

With the deft indifference of a healer he first untied her undershirt just enough at the collar so he could get to her shoulder, where scarlet had started to seep through again. Blood concerned him far more than bruises. “You’ve opened this again.” 

“It’ll heal.” 

“Not at the rate you continue to wound it again.” 

She arched a brow at him. “When we aren’t in the middle of a battle I’ll stop reopening it.” 

“I didn’t ask for your attitude,” digging around in one of the small packs corded to his belt, Raenor pulled out the last bit of gauze he had on hand and pressed it against the reopened wound. “Hopefully our horses didn’t go far. Hold this.” 

When she complied, worming her hand under his to apply pressure to the wound, he moved down to press his hands against where the plate had buckled into her rips, watching her face carefully as he ran over for any breaks. She sighed, eyes drifting closed as he called on what healing magic he knew, doing his best to kick into process necessary healing. “I wish you wouldn’t do such things.” 

After a long pause her eyes crackled open. “You keep me alive, you should at least let me do the same for you.” 

“It does nothing if you are not alive to be kept.” 

“We protect each other Raenor,” her eyes drifted closed again. “We just have different ways of doing it.” 


	4. Day 4: Cargûl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 4. “I know you didn’t ask for this.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: Mentions of character death

The hills outside of Ost Baranor had no right to hold the peaceful silence that they did. Not when the shadows of the night concealed the sopping scarlet of the grass, when the starlight cast faint and bitter light on the remains of the brigands that had stood in the Rangers’ and Nazgûl’s way. 

Blackwolds had posed an ongoing threat to Breeland ever since they had begun amassing in their camps and ruins like a plague. Wulfwryn couldn’t hold much sympathy for their blood on her blade. 

It was the billowing red robe she could still see burning on the makeshift pyre they’d constructed. The form that it had draped, hollowed out and gaunt near beyond recognition. 

_"You are too late! I am Cargûl!” _his snarling voice, hardly even human anymore, echoed through her thoughts on loop._ “I serve the Great Eye!" _

Burying her face in her hands and keeling over a hoarse whine broke from her throat. 

Her words had done nothing to throw aside the corruption of the Nine. Her presence even less--setting her form only as a target for a kill. Only her blade had been enough to cut the corruption; and the strings that had held up what once had been Amdir.

Shared glances, lingering smiles and bloated pauses. All things that she had been too cowardly to act on in life, too preoccupied with the possibility of rejection to take the leap. 

It had been her that he and Strider rescued from the Blackwold’s chains in Chetwood. It was pulling her and the two young hobbits from the burning prison that they had been waylaid by the lone rider on the deathly black horse, that the corrupted blade had found his shoulder.

The corruption had pained him all throughout Archet, driven him mad until he disappeared into the night itself. Reniolind, Lenglinn wounded, all in the madness that her mistake had driven Amdir too. 

_Amdir please, I know it isn’t you who’s doing this. Come back. _

Wulfwryn shook her head, fingers curling into her hair until they bit into her scalp. 

_I am not what you once believed...   
_

He was dead because of _her_. No matter what pretty words anyone tried to feed her, his loss was a dark stain on her hands. A brutal strike to her own heart. 

A broken breath. 

_Yes... yes, you are. Let me help you._

_Never--_

A firm hand on her shoulder caused her to flinch, a hoarse shriek crawling from her throat. She looked up, only to immediately focus back on the ground beneath her feet. The grimly grieving look on Strider’s worn face wasn’t something she was ready to face. 

“I know you did not ask for this Wulfwryn, I’m sorry.” he was saying, as though the words were reaching her from across Eriador. “Torthann told me what happened at the altar.” 

At his pause, long enough to be leaving space her her own words, she hummed in recognition. It seemed to be enough. 

“It is possibly too much to ask, but I still need your aid if you’re willing to offer it. The name Skorgrím has surfaced with an elf now taking shelter in Rivendell; but there is still many questions left unattended here and not enough hands to attend to them.” 

Digging herself deeper into the hole that had already lost her the one she had silently cared for. Perhaps this was her to be her punishment and road to penance for turning her back on her post in Gondor to search for her true king. 

So be it. 

As though her head weighed a hundred pounds heavy on her shoulders she forced her eyes back up. Her voice sounded broken and tired to her own ears. “I accept. Tell me where to ride next.” 

If she couldn’t save Amdir then maybe, _maybe_, she could make up for it. Somehow. Or fall trying. 


	5. Day 5: Festivals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 5.“I might just kiss you.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: n/a

**\--**

Summerdays, or Lithe Festival had come to Eriador on warm winds, begging to be enjoyed. And so Wulfwryn had begged for them to pause on their journey, if only for a day. Hobbiton had been a short ride east of Breeland and surely riding themselves into the ground would do them no good when the time came to fight.

It hadn’t taken much convincing for Raenor to turn his horse towards the rolling green hills of the Shire and the Shire welcomed them with open arms. The hobbits were a tough, but softer folk, all the readier to share their merriment and hearty food around their Party Tree draped in ribbons. 

The night of their arrival they carted blocks of ice to the sweet treat stand in Bywater, laughing as the slick block nearly slid from its wagon again and again and flew kites beneath the starlight. When the wind ripped Wulfwryn’s from her hand, as she hadn’t been paying quite as much attention to it as she should’ve, Raenor let her slide between his arms, her back to his chest, and let them fly it beneath the half moon together. 

She leaned her head back against his chest, breaths falling into sync with his, and wondered if that was what peace and soft affection felt like. It was a far cry from the need and simmering desperate want to lose themselves that fired between them more often than not. It wasn’t a feeling she found herself wanting to let slip between her fingers. 

Morning dawned warm and sunny, bright rays spilling through the windows of their quaint little room. The warmth followed them back to the little valley beneath Bag End, where their good merit and the generosity of those around them gifted them clothes for the rising heat. 

“You’ll need them if you’re taking the mayor to his picnic,” the shop keeper had said brightly. “His spots are always ambitious and the heat is monstrous around noon!” 

She’d not lied; by the time they’d crested the last hill in the Green Hill Country the beating sun had left them gleaming in sweat and the poor pony Penny lathered beneath her packs. 

But the view was brilliant, the fields beneath them rolling and the bonds gleaming in the distance and the peacefulness was divine once the mayor took his leave. They remained, sprawled on the checkered blanket, soaking in the sunshine. 

Wulfwryn drew another lock of Raenor’s hair between her fingers, weaving the long chestnut strands together with the springs of wildflowers she had pulled from the white carpets around them. “There,” she pulled her hands away, carding her fingers all the way through the loose strands of his hair once more for good measure. “It’s all braided. You look like a faerie prince.” 

“I look like an elf,” he teased, turning around to face her. “with flowers in my hair.”

“A prince.” she corrected once more with a frown. “Let me at least have that.” 

“Fine,” he relented, a half smile pulling at his lips. This close, her fingers still draped in the braids she had made, with the afternoon sun softening his eyes from steel to the grey of a dove, a surge of affection went through her. 

“I could kiss you right now.” 

His smile widened. “Why don’t you? You certainly have before.” 

She slid her hands down to cup his jaw, skin warm from the time spent under the summer heat. “I just might,” 

The distance between them closed as Raenor rocked forward. “Then do it,” 

Underneath the summer skies, holding each other close in affection instead of intensity, things between them were peaceful. 

And Wulfwryn had to wonder, if for a moment, if that’s what love could someday feel like. 


	6. Day 6: Minas Tirith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 6. “Yes, I’m aware. Your point?”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**\--**

“Wulfwryn,” Searching for the human woman in the White City of Man had been no easy task, not when the streets were swarming and directions given to him were filled to the brim with vague hand motions and names for places he did not know. 

But there was the spot that she was meant to be, and the spot that she currently was. And the two did not coincide. Out by the fickle tree, by the dais draped with Gondor’s banners and surrounded by Company and the elves waiting to see Arwen to the side of the newly crowned Elessar. Not here, hiding in the space they had been sharing. 

Draped in a heavy white cloak that spilled to the floor, clad in obsidian dark armor engraved with the three of Gondor in gold...she was meant to be standing out there, taking her place as the captain of the guard. Taking the position she had earned long before, before she’d turned her back on the corruption within the city. 

“The ceremony will be starting soon, you’re meant to be out there.” 

His heart clenched when she drew her eyes from her hands, clenched in her lap, to his face. There was a deep sadness etched there, darkening her eyes and pulling the corners of her lips down. “Yes, I’m aware. You’re point?”

Crossing the room, he hardly began to think of a response before her arms were around his waist, her face buried against his chest. A ragged breath suspiciously close to a sob broke from her. What caused her pain, he couldn’t place, they had won--with losses surely, but for the moment she seemed to have come to peace with it--, she was taking back her earned position...what was there to cry about?

His hum in question was met by her arms tightening around him, before within another beat she was pulling away, lips parting as though words were on her mind but never finding voice. 

When he cradled her jaw to draw her eyes back up she leaned into his touch, her brows drawing together in a grimace almost painful. “I don’t want to go out there.” she said softly. Her eyes welled. “As soon as I step you...its going to be the end.” 

It hit him all at once as an ache deep in his heart. “Ah, _meldanya_...”

With the War for the Ring, as it was being called now, coming to an end, he was called back to Rivendell. For what he wasn’t sure, for how long he was even less certain. He had not been granted the details. Though their parting stung, he’d thought she had wanted it, or at least come to some manner of terms with it. For what would a human want with an elven lover--being forced to watch in bitterness as he remained stagnant to her eyes as age started to lay its marks on her?

It hadn’t occurred to him that he might have read her wrong. 

“I know that I shouldn’t keep you from your home...that its selfish of me to ask--” 

Tilting her chin up he caught her lips with his, stifling the miserable words before they could fall. She sank into his kiss, her eyes drifting closed. He almost lost himself in it, in the familiarity of her against him instead of facing the world outside. And yet...

Gently he parted them, brushing his thumbs over her cheekbones before pulling the black fabric half mask up to cover her mouth and over her nose, completing the armor she refused to put on. “You won’t lose me so easily.” he promised, pressing a kiss to her brow. “I’ll gladly return, if that’s what you ask of me.” 

After all, he had an eternity to live and wander the groves and shining halls of Rivendell, to love her and mourn her in years after. She had mere decades. And he had given her mortal hands his heart long before he’d considered the consequences. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meldanya: "my beloved" in elvish Quenya


	7. Day 7: Melinyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 7. “No, and that’s final.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Drop by Drop by The Sweeplings for extra painful feels ;)

**\--**

“You have to let me ride to Gondor!” The soft soles of his shoes pattered whispering echoes across the shining floors as Raenor pursued the lord of the Last Homely House, desperation thick in his voice. “I’m begging you.” 

He’d already waved the letter, clutched tightly enough in his hand it had started to buckle and the ink had started to smear dark across his fingers. The words didn’t have to be legible to be engraved on his mind. Hastily written in the shaky hand of one of Wulfwryn’s guards: 

_Our captain insists that we send word to you in her stead. I do not know the extent to which you are familiar with her work, but for knowledge’s sake: in the lands around Minas Tirith orcs remain. Routinely we have gone out to hunt the vile beasts, much as your kind has done in the mountains for centuries. The other day she was caught by one of their foul blades in a skirmish. She insists it’s not severe but it’s festered and sickness spreads quickly through her. Trusting her word isn’t sound. _

_We’re well familiar with your name and have heard her speak often of the distance between the two of you and while it may not be possible...your name has come often in her delirious ramblings. If you could find your way to the White City...it may give her restless heart some peace._

Remembering more was not a necessity, only that he must get to Minas Tirith. If only to hold her close while she drifted from the world, knowing that he was not a world away, but instead beside her one last time. Or to draw on long forgotten arts of healing that the race of man did not have in their books and memories. 

“Elrond,” he stopped dead as the older, wearied elf, halted at the base of the gilded stairs, one hand resting on the frail banister. “My kind lord, _please_.” 

The loss of Arwen to a half mortal’s life and the remnants of a war to mark the age had put weight untold on Elrond’s shoulders, Raenor could see it in the slope of his posture, in the deep tiredness in his eyes. Like many who had witness this war as the most recent of many in a gruesome history, he seemed to be drawn closer to the sea and Valinor with each passing year. 

Raenor wasn’t yet ready to go; he had business yet in Arda, he had a love that still burned bright who’s life may be ebbing while he mindlessly argued. 

Elrond’s brows drew together severely, the lines around his mouth deepening as he frowned. “Raenor, I told you no, and that’s final.” 

“She might be dying, I need to go to her.” It was all he could do to keep his voice steady, but he could not help the way he reached out, edging closer to dropping to his knees and raising his hands to Elrond in a plead to ride. Unable to face the look of finality in his eyes, Raenor let his own eyes drop to the floor, bowing his head. 

The cool bite of metal from finely crafted rings bit into his skin as Elrond gently wrapped his hands around Raenor’s clasped ones. “_Ninya nildë,” _he sighed heavily. 

_“Melinyes,” _I love her, he replied, voice hardly more than a emotional rasp from behind the emotion clogging his throat. 

_“_Such is the flaw of elves who fall for those who live mortal lives.” Some of his own sadness seemed to be mirrored in the lord of the house, echoed within the depths of his eyes in stories untold to Raenor. “It would do you best to let her pass if she will and pass yourself into Valinor, you’ll find no heartbreak there.” 

Raenor shook his head, a soft cry breaking from him. “I am bound here.” _   
_

Hands tightening over his, he heard more than felt Elrond’s deep sorrow resonating in the space between them. “And if she passes into the light? Will you too fade from the pain in your heart?” 

Shuddering and finally drawing watery eyes up from the floor, Raenor gave another tiny shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter; where she goes, I will follow. I cannot bear to leave.”

Whether it was to fade like a candle snuffed or like a flame in a breeze, his feet would not follow a path across the sea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ninya nildë: Quenya "My friend"   
Melinyes: Quenya for "I love him/her" 
> 
> *please don't come at me for my elvish, it has been a LONG time since I've looked at the language in depth and I don't have much time to really dig into its connotations/grammar when writing these :') if I ever write longer, more polished things I will focus harder.


	8. Day 8: Warm Nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 8. "Can you stay?”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: T
> 
> Warnings/Tags: implied sex, nothing explicitly stated

**\--**

Routines were hardly broken once established deeply enough. Routines were the constants in an ever changing adventure, the motions one went through that eventual become a way to unwind. Routines were not easily changed. 

Falling together as their armor was put aside, easing aches and worried thoughts with gentle touches and needy kisses had become as natural as anything. Falling away from Wulfwryn, slipping his arm from around her as she fell into the deep sleep of humans, was just another step in that routine. Turning his back to drift into the dozing meditations of his people, or keeping watch if the world around them was not blocked by study walls. 

It was simple, really, they both had things to forget and nights together were far easier than being left to their own minds, the satiated haze afterwards numbing away anything else.

There should be no feelings involved; Raenor had started their dynamic as such and Wulfwryn seemed content to keep it the same. Keep it routine. It figures he himself would take the one wrong step: to start feeling a warmth when kissing her, to find himself enamored by the way she smiled, entranced by the power she exuded when she donned her armor and swung her sword. 

Most nights he could slip his arm from around her waist without her stirring. Her hand catching at his forearm sleepily, her elbow pinning his against her side nearly sent him jumping from his skin. Frozen like a scared deer, he didn’t move a muscle as she trailed her fingertips over the back of his hand. “Can you stay? For tonight?” 

He should say no to this, it would only dig the roots of his affection deeper. But who was he to say no? Not when she turned in his arms, tucking her face in the crook of his neck where he could feel her warm breath and soft smile when he murmured on a breath that he would stay. When, as he curled his arm around her ahead, she sighed out such a simple word, 

“Good.” 

It became harder to leave when morning came and a soft smile spread across her sleep-softened face and she said, voice raspy from sleep, “You stayed,” 

“Of course I did.” She didn’t flinch away when on a whim he pressed a kiss to her forehead. No, instead she ran her fingers up into his hair, tugging him in for a warm kiss before pushing herself to her knees. 

“Loathe as I am to say it...we should be leaving sooner than not.” 

He’d thought, as they’d packed replenished supplies and donned their armor, that just as the town they road out of that this night would be left behind them by the time the next one came. 

And yet, even as they prepared to rest for the night, she gestured for him to come over to her and pressed close to his side as he eased next to her. “Can you stay again tonight?” Chin resting on his shoulders, eyes wide and hopeful and crinkling from the force of her grin as he agreed,

“Gladly.” And let her pull him down into her embrace.


	9. Day 9: Worries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 9. “There is a certain taste to it.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A 

**\--**

There is a certain taste that comes with being a warrior. 

Bitter as adversaries force her hand to outcomes to the blade, sharp tangs with each wrong blow that would rip a hole in her lip anew or blood bubbling at the corners of her mouth. 

There was a certain taste to it and it was one that Raenor was not well acquainted with. In his millennia of life he had been within the spacious safety of Rivendell or the gleaming courtyards of Edhelion he had focused his eyes on the art of healing and the simple love of his music, not on grim tactics of combat outside of skirmishes and the necessity to survive. 

He’d never needed to swallow that bitterness. It had very rarely passed his lips. 

She could see it in the way his eyes widened at the disconnected certainty in which she cut down their adversaries. In the way he paled when looking at her injuries that she only spared a cursory glance to. As if she were a different creature than he in the vicious world of fighting. 

In a way, she supposed, they were. 

“Do you hate it?” she asked one day, cleaning the grime and blood off of her armor. The look she met was one of confusion. “How I fight? That I fight?” 

“Why would that bother me?” he asked, openly honest with her as ever and even though she hadn’t known what to expect, relief flowed through her. 

And yet something in her still needed to push. “Because you’re a healer, you aren’t as...as well acquainted with the business....” 

She broke off with a gasp as he moved to press a finger lightly over her lips. “Wulfwryn,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her shocked expression. “It does not bother me; you have your role and I have mine. What you found proficiency is does not make you a monster to me.” 

It shouldn’t have bothered her, she hadn’t even thought that it was on her mind. And yet the cool relief spreading through her was on the contrary as he cupped her cheek and pressed a kiss to her forehead. 


	10. Day 10: Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 10. “Listen, I can’t explain it, you’ll have to trust me.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**\-- **

Finding herself in a dank dungeon, surrounded by rusting bars and rats, was not how Wulfwryn had imagined she would find herself in Breeland. Or at least, she hoped that she was in Breeland. Anywhere else would be truly miserable, especially with how far she’d followed her leads to bring her to Bree. 

Nor was a smarting headache from a brigand’s--if the foul group that had pounced upon her, with their ratty armor and poorly kept swords were made up of the brigands rumored to prowl throughout Breeland as of late--sword the way that she had planned to wake up. 

Pushing herself to her knees, she brought a hand to her head with a soft curse, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. If this was simply a brigand’s cell in some old re purposed stronghold then there had to be a weak point. Rocking to her feet, she paced about the small space, kicking at the bars with her boot to try and find a weak base and pulling at the upper bars, hoping for a part corroded enough to break. 

No such luck for her, not even at the rusty door as she gripped the bars and leaned all of her weight back, even trying after to slam her shoulders into it as hard as she could. A bolt of protesting pain was all she earned for her efforts. 

A rustle in the darkness in front of her jumped her heart into her throat, bringing her to square her stance and reach for a sword that she didn’t have at her belt. 

“Be at ease, I’m only here to help.” 

He certainly did not look the part of a brigand, in a dirty but patched cloak, with a solid sword held in hand, he matched more the descriptions of the Rangers that she had heard whispers of. She let her tension ease as he broke the lock to her door, slipping through almost as soon as it started to swing on its hinges. 

“This belong to you I assume?” With barely a nod she reached greedily for her sword, feeling assurance settle back through her even just as the familiar weight of her weapon in her hand. Her eye caught a pile in the order and she darted over, frowning as she found her bow in a broken pile and her shield in a truly sad state. 

She would have to make do. 

“We must hurry if we wish to escape.” There was a note of warning in the man’s voice and she turned back, she had no desire to find herself back in that cell. 

“May I at least know your name?” she asked, coming to stand alongside him again. Fighting alongside strangers had always but an uncomfortable itch in the back of her mind--if her unknown partner fell, then what? She would have no knowledge of who she had failed to protect, or who had put down her life for their safety. 

The sound of footsteps was coming closer--they’d not have been able to slip out unseen even if they wanted to. “You may know me as Strider,” he said, not seeming to note the way that Wulfwryn perked up, for she’d heard the name in her travels, “and I hope that you know how to fight.” 

If she had more time and less training in the art of control, she perhaps would have been indignant. “I was a guard of Gondor--believe me, I know how to fight.” 

At that, oddly enough, she saw him look to her from her peripheral. Brigands breaking through the door didn’t allow for any questions or further introductions, nor did the brief moment of respite after the skirmish. 

Strider was already moving into the small courtyard of packed dirt outside of the jailhouse, speaking as he walked. “You are not the only prisoner here, friend. My fellow Amdir and I have come to rescue a particular hobbit, but it turns out he is not the hobbit we have been tracking.” 

“This escape will be dangerous for us all, for I know that a great evil lurks here. I have heard of its movements, and I can feel its presence.”

Coming up alongside him, her brow knit as she looked up at him. “A great evil?”

“I do not have time to explain. But if you are willing, two innocent hobbits are also being held captive here: Celandine Brandybuck and Mundo Sackvill-Baggins. If you could free them, my fellow Amdir is keeping our escape free by the east gate--” 

There wasn’t time to listen any further if she was to go rescue two hobbits. She already owed Strider for saving her from her cell. “I accept. Find the hobbits, meet you and your fellow by the gate.” 

After they split, she realized she had agreed to something far more than she’d bargained for. Hobbits, for all their curious habits, could be quite crafty when they wanted to be. The girl, Celadine, had seized a torch as soon as Wulfwryn had freed her from her own cage, throwing it upon the piles of hay and setting the dry wooden timbers ablaze. 

It wasn’t exactly the way that Wulfwryn would have gone about it; but it was what she had been given and the hobbit lass’ plan had worked. 

“We need to find Mundo!” she reminded Wulfwryn, rather unnecessarily, before an eerily lonely shriek that chilled them to the bone echoed through the smoke. Celadine’s voice went small and shrill. “What is going on?” 

That must be the foul evil that Strider had been searching for; Wulfwryn knew of no wordly evil that could instill horror such as that. She placed a hand on the hobbit’s shoulder, steering her around. “I can’t explain it, but I’ll protect you, you’ll have to trust me. Let’s go find Mundo.” 


	11. Day 11: Trestlebridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 11. “It’s not always like this.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A
> 
> *I tried to dig through the timeline to get more specifics on Raenor’s timeline but ah...not tonight lmao

**\--**

They rode into the North Downs to find Trestlebridge smoking in the remnants of flames. 

Wulfwryn watched as the shock and horror flitted across Raenor’s face, saw his eyes darting around to the injured, lain up with burns and open wounds, and the dead, piled off to the side until the drifting sparks wouldn’t turn pyres into bonfires. 

It was times like these that she remembered that orc raids were not a common sight in the woods of the Trollshaws, where mountain trolls and bears were more a threat until you patrolled up into the Misty Mountains. He wasn’t well broke to the smell of burning timber and worse, or to the sting of smoke in eyes when riding through and thinking ‘What a shame, here’s another one’. 

And how could she forget until he nearly leapt from his horse to fall to his knees alongside a cluster of wounded, pulling supplies from packs at his waist, that he was at heart a healer and the pain of others was as sharp as his own to him. He wore his heart and his empathy on his sleep, bare as the emotion written on his face. 

Defending the remnants of Trestlebridge from another orchish raid, the creates fighting to break into Breeland and the camps they had established on the outskirts, worse heavier on the minstrel. With each wave of evil they cut down she noted the pained horror that etched deeper and deeper into his face. 

Saw the revulsion as he scrubbed his shirt of blood until his hands were prunish and raw that night, kept up in one of the few remaining rooms as rain dampened the remaining embers in a quiet hiss. 

She had traveled from Gondor to Bree, Bree to the Lonelands before being called briefly to Rivendell. Raenor had seen his own share of destruction in Ered Luin...but the hopeless skirmish he had seen was nothing compared to walking into a burning town and fully understanding the evil that spread across Eriador like a plague. 

“Raenor,” she murmured, sliding behind him on the straw cot he’s eased himself down on and had not moved from since. When she slid her arms around his waist, resting her cheek against his shoulder, she felt him sigh out a held breath. 

He scrubbed a hand over his face, muffling his voice. “I’ve not...this darkness and corruption...I’ve not seen the likes of it since I came of age...firsthand I’ve not seen it since...I can’t even remember when.” he turned his cheek towards her slightly. “Celebrían, I believe, when she was brought to us healers.”

Wulfwryn wasn’t familiar with the name he spoke of but when he offered no further explanation she turned her cheek and pressed a kiss against his shoulder. “It’s not always like this.” 

“I know it’s not,” Raenor’s voice broke. “I had a childhood without this dark, suffocating shadow. I wanted the shadow fall and grow as I’ve grown, all from the shelters of Edhelion and Rivendell. To be thrown into it’s shade completely...” 

It was easy to forget that he had seen years shift across the land by the thousands...that he had seen the rise and fall of things first hand that she had only heard in stories and scrolls. “I mean now too.” she said softly. “It isn’t always like this; there are places that are still bright. Still things that are good in this world.” 

When the only response she got was a small flick of his ears she sighed herself, shifting back so she could idly draw her fingers through his hair, working through tangles just to have something to focus on. “You don’t believe me? I know you’ve been in Celondim...the shadow hasn’t reached there. Bree’s hardly cold and grim and the Shire!” she gave a soft laugh. “You cannot tell me that the shire has been overtaken by darkness and evil.” 

That at the very least, earned her the smallest hints of a smile. “I can’t pretend to know what it feels like, seeing the descent to where we are now...I really can’t. But there’s still good Raenor, I promise.” 

When her hand settled on his shoulder he caught at it, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “I try to remember that there is.” 


	12. Day 12: Forges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 12. “What if I don’t see it?”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**\-- **

The forges burned hot in Celondim, kept firing beneath canopies of intricately worked metal, overlooking the sweeping hills and mountains of Ered Luin.

Brilliant pink petals drifted down around Raenor as he wound around the path to the main terrace, breathing in the crisp, cool air with the first sense of peace he had felt in a long while. In desperate need to stop, recoup and replenish their supplies, he had led them to the one place he’d known for certain that they’d be safe: one of the few remaining strongholds of the elves outside of Rivendell. 

“Wulfwryn,” he called out, coming round the corner to the heat of the forges. She barely rewarded him a look up from her work, so intensely was she focused on repairing the buckled plates of her armor. “Are you almost done for the day?”

She didn’t offer him an answer to that either and he leaned his shoulder against one of the support columns, taking a moment to watch her work and admire. It had been an unexpected skill, her ability to work a forge with masterful skill if given both the time and the materials, but not one that he found any shame in. Certainly it was useful, they had to shell out less silvers for repair work when she herself could use the scatterings of forges like those found in Bree or here. She herself could make money from her work. 

But he found that some of the better benefits of her mastery of the forge.

“See something you like, elf?” she finally spoke up, lips quirking up even as her eyes stayed fixed on the metal plate beneath her hands. 

In his noncommittal hum there were a hundred answers. The way the burning fires cast sharp highlights across her features, or the way the loose strands of hair framing her face curled into their selves with the heat. The intensity of her concentration, eyes narrowed and tongue pressed into cheek. How, most admittedly what he had found himself watching often without shame, the the stagnant air and hard-work of the forge pressed the material of her shirt to her form and her muscles moved beneath as she lifted metal ore and armor. 

She knew his answer without asking, that much was clear from the unabashed way her eyes finally flicked to his with a quirk of her brow. “Nothing to say for yourself?” 

“That implies I would be apologizing,” he returned. “which I am not.” 

From the way the smugness in her expression didn’t dampen, it was the answer she’d either hoped for or expected. “You asked me something earlier.” 

“If you were almost done,” he tilted his head back against the pillar, eyes still on her. “There’s a small celebration tonight that I think you’d like to see.” 

She hummed. “And if I don’t see it?” But she was already stacking her tools back to the side, setting aside her repaired armor. 

“Then I would be a little disappointed.” Raenor chuckled softly as Wulfwryn strode over, sliding in close to him, hands planting on the pillar on either side of him. This close he could feel residual heat radiating off her skin. “Though it seems you have other ideas.” 

Her low laugh in return was muffled against his neck as she pressed a teasing kiss to the exposed line of his jaw. “Oh I have a few,” 


	13. Day 13: Reunions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 13. “I never knew it could be this way.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: Mentions of injury
> 
> NOTE: This is a continuation/follow up to day 7

Raenor hadn’t paused at the gates of Minas Tirith to see the way the city seemed to shine brighter than ever with new life, didn’t pause after handing his horse to the stable master to see that the soot and grime of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields as it was now called had been scrubbed away. 

He had the mind for only one destination, the interest in only one person. A lone elf, adorned still in the ethereal traveling garb of his people, tearing up the ringed levels of Minas Tirith earned eyes and whispers, but he paid no attention to it. 

Not until he found the door that he needed, found it opened by an old and bent healer wearing the White Tree on her cloak. She stepped aside willingly--perhaps they had met before, in these streets and courtyards themselves or some years prior...there were many faces and names in Raenor’s memory and trying to pull the source of familiarity now was like trying to hold water--and he managed a nod of thanks, eyes drifting to the bed pressed in the corner of the room. 

From the door to his knees hitting the stone of the floor beside her, padded only by a thin rug, was a blur. Perhaps it was his own exhaustion--he had set a brutal pace from Rivendell to Minas Tirith, even for an elf and his elven-kind horse--or the fear of what would await him in the White City. 

To find Wulfwryn still breathing, nearly took all the strength from his body. 

“_Meldanya,” _he breathed out, emotion strangling his voice. She was covered in blankets, obscuring her injury but not the remains of fevered pallor from her face, but still he could see the steady rise and fall of her chest. The letters he had gripped so tightly in Rivendell had spoken of a grave enough condition that could have become dire as he had traveled...thank the Valar it had stablized instead. 

She was still with him. Unable to find any words to fill the silence around the tightness in his throat, he dropped his head to her shoulder, drinking in _her_, her being there, her life, her _presence_. 

He had never known that love could be this way--to have the power to make both the brightest and darkest days he’d ever experienced. That it could both strip him of his worries and plague him with a anguish so bleak that he felt he was drowning--else he may never would have opened himself so fully to her. 

And yet? For all the dalliances he had held over thousands of years, he could not imagine Wulfwryn simply being one of them. It was his own fault, his own choice, and he would bear it. 

Still, how long he curled there, emotion quivering his shoulders, he didn’t know. Until he felt a shift of movement beneath him, a long sigh of a waking breath, and her hand drawing over his hair. “Raenor...?” 

The noise he croaked out at the sound of her voice was filled with pain and relief in equal measure, his expression bearing it all when he raised his head to finally meet her eyes. Though still shadowed with pain of her own, they brightened when they met his, her hands slipping down to cup his jaw, fingers brushing away the dampness that lay there. “You’re here...I dreamt you were for a time but...then you were gone, across the Sea and--” 

“_Alalárë,” _he murmured, closing his eyes at her touch. _Never_. “I wouldn’t.” _I can’t_. 

With an insistent, but light, touch she drew him to her, kissing him with a tenderness soft enough to breath his heart twice over. Even when she pulled away it was only to twine her arms around his shoulders, and bury her face in the crook of his neck. There he could feel the hitch in her breath and the smallness of her own voice. “I’m glad you’re here...” then, almost as if afraid it would be too much to ask. “Will you stay?” 

He pressed a kiss to the side of her head, the worst thoughtlessly leaving him with a stubborn resolution. “Of course...I’m with you.” 

For as long as he was gifted. 


	14. Chapter 14: Confidant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 14. “I can’t come back.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: 
> 
> Note: Another short one today because energy is lacking ;-;

Traveling with Wulfwryn had become a study in contradictions. No, _knowing _Wulfwryn was a study in contradictions. Here was a warrior from a grand human city, willfully turning away from her prestigious position and heritage. A human loving an elf. A warrior who didn’t seek the kill. 

The position she had left behind and the home with it fascinated Raenor the most. He had asked her about it, many times over, only to get the same noncommittal answer. It wasn’t a topic she seemed particularly keen to share on, much like an open wound that one kept guarded close away from the painful touch, even if it would help. 

Eventually Raenor stopped asking. It wasn’t pressing for him to know, it wasn’t a matter of life and death but instead simple curiosity. 

As it came to light, one evening by the heat of their fire beneath a rocky outcropping in the North Downs, he only had to stop asking to be granted an answer. 

Wulfwryn toyed with the loose end of her plaited hair before sighing loudly enough that it drew Raenor from the mindless state of strumming of his lute he had let himself sink into. “Hm?” 

“You always ask me why I don’t just return to Minas Tirith.” She looking up at him. “Or why I ever left in the first place.” 

The hand that he held up was waved away. “I know you said you didn’t need an answer, but I’m tired of mulling it over alone.” The firelight shadowed her eyes, making them haunted in the shadow. But her expression was hopelessly open to him. “May I?” 

Relief shouldn’t have been so apparent across her face at his simple nod--how long had she been letting this eat away at her? 

“I can’t go back.” even just saying the words seemed to lift a weight off of her shoulders--slumping them down like she no longer had to hold them up and back. “At least...not right now.” 

Raenor tilted his head. There were rumors, certainly, things that Elrond had mentioned in passing, shards of a sword in Rivendell’s halls. None of which he was graced enough to know in full. “Because of the king?” 

“And lack there of.” she agreed, wrapping her arms around herself. “In Gondor...the Stewards rule in the king’s stead. Denethor no longer does his job as he should. There’s a certain paranoia and pain overshadowing him, controlling his actions...I couldn’t keep fighting under that banner.” 

Her voice dropped, almost too quiet to be heard among the sounds of night, rustling trees, and the crackling of their fire. “I want to fight under the banner of Isildur’s heir, if he still exists.” 

The title nudged a small sense of familiarity in the back of Raenor’s mind, some long distant mumbling of Elrond that he had long since forgotten. “You still have hope.” 

For a moment he thought she didn’t hear him, her pause long and uncertain as she drew an idle pattern over the material of her trousers. When she finally lifted her eyes again they were clouded with the uncertainty of her pause, but her voice was strong as stone. “I have to. If I don’t then I turned my back needlessly on my fellows and may be just as good as a traitor. And I cannot stand myself as a traitor.” 

Reaching across the gap between them, Raenor rested his fingertips on the back of her hand. “If you found cause to leave, then you aren’t a traitor.” 

Flipping her hand, she twined her fingers with his. “I have to keep believing that.” 


	15. Day 15: Realizations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 15.“That’s what I’m talking about!” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: 
> 
> *I know I’ve already kind of explored this idea but...it’s been a hard day y’all work with me lol 

\--

Wulfwryn hadn’t meant to go down, hadn’t meant to find herself in a fight. 

It hadn’t even been a fight, they had been ambushed by a pack of goblins, been chased by them as they’d pushed their horses as fast as they dared over the unkempt path. A few lucky arrows had appeared out of nowhere, her horse’s legs going out from beneath it with a cry. 

While she didn’t remember hitting the ground, only the way it had knocked her senseless and shaken the world to a blur, she remembered adrenaline lifting her to her feet, drawing her sword unsteadily for the beasts that swarmed from the trees. 

Blood on her sword, spattering on her armor, Raenor’s shout. The ground, blissfully solid beneath her knees, breath loud in her ears. 

Raenor’s hands on her face, his voice rushing back to her. Asking her questions, noting her answers. 

Her thoughts became her own again not long later, holed up in a small in in the little town they’d been so close to reaching. Sitting on the hard packed floor, armor laid out in front of her as Raenor fussed as healers fussed. 

“You’re lucky you were wearing armor and that you landed the way you did.” he was saying. “I’ve known many an elf killed or seriously hurt in rotational falls with horses.” a long pause, mumbled, “And those were elven steeds, not the draftier types.” 

Grimacing at the truth of his words, Wulfwryn shrugged none the less. She was lucky to walk out of any dangerous situation--the danger in the moment had lost its edge of fear. If she found herself in something then well...there was no way for her to wind back time to get out of it. 

“Those goblins came out of nowhere--it’s okay. We got out of it. I came out of it none the worse for wear.” 

Some deeper bruises, some cuts and scrapes. Certainly some soreness in the morning, but she had dealt with and come back from worse. 

“See, that’s what I’m talking about! It isn’t okay.” it was the shortest Raenor had ever been with her, nostrils flaring as he heaved a deep breath, looking to the side. It was enough for her to jump, turning her head to look at him. “I worry about you.” 

“You don’t need to worry.” Wulfwryn retorted, pulling away from his healing touch. “I can handle myself.” 

Eyes flashing, he glared at her. “You don’t think I know that?” he growled, frustrated. “But you’re so...so reckless and bravely foolish and...” 

_Oh_. She saw it now, the painful burst of conflict in his expression. The weight of his words, of the affection behind them, lay heavy between them now as understanding dawned on her. How hard it was to let his feelings manifest instead of denying them. That each time he saw her on the ground it was a flash to the inevitable. But beyond that, beyond her own mortality--for elves could be struck down just as humans in battle--the thought of that loss caused him pain. 

That was the degree in which he cared. Though he’d not voiced it to her in strict terms, if she pulled her eyes from the surface for just one moment perhaps she would have already seen it. 

“Please,” his voice deflated, his expression softening. Whether it was for her to come to him again, or a simple blanket plea, it was a pitiful word. Something ini his expression held a heavy realization. “_Please_.” 

Without a hesitation she moved back towards him, letting him smear the remaining salve on her bruises and pains as she sorted through what that entailed. To be so deeply connected seemed to only be setting themselves up for pain. 

What was she supposed to say to that? She wasn’t going to pry his true thoughts from him now, she wasn’t going to force him to lay everything on the table. Not when she herself wasn’t sure how to word the intense swirl of emotions in her mind whenever she dwelled too long on him. “Raenor?” 

“Please just be more careful.” he finally said. “I’d like to not lose you.” 

For now that was all the answer she needed. 


	16. Day 16: Archet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 16. “Listen. No, really listen.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: No major warnings

Wulfwryn pulled the dripping cloth from the trough, hastily tying it around her mouth and nose before she inhaled more of the black smoke spewing from the timber ruins around her. Everything was burning, obscuring her vision and reducing the Blackwolds and citizens of Archet to obscure shapes dancing in the flames. 

“Amdir?” she shouted, voice cracking from strain. She had been told he hadn’t fallen in the slaughter a the Mad Badger--though how the man who had been pained even at the smallest of motions over the last few days had managed to escape a swarm of brigands and flames, she didn’t know--and that alone was a small comfort. 

Strider was nowhere to be seen. Amdir was gone. Archet was in flames. 

Gods above help her. She would be thankful just to make it out alive. But she needed to find Amdir--she couldn’t leave the gates behind not knowing if he was blackened to ash behind her. 

“Come, Wulfwryn, we need to reach the main gates.” the younger Brackenbrook ran up alongside her, face darkened by soot and ash, knuckles white on the hilt of his sword. “Something approaches.” 

On her other side, the elder Brackenbrook let his hand drop onto her shoulder. “Take heart, all isn’t lost in Archet.” 

She shook her head, hefting her shield back up onto her arm despite the quiver in her muscles, the way her lungs burned. “I fear not for Archet, but for my ranger.” The fight overtook them before any answer, or commentary, could be given. 

How many Blackwolds had she killed, just for three more to take their place? She had flushed their nest, killed their leaders and yet _still _they manifested, took what was hers and ruined the lives of countless innocents. 

If there was any shadow across Eriador, it stretched long across Chetwood and Archet. 

“Cob!” she roared as they finally broke the line, tumbling into what once had been the open training space. The wall in front of them was a burning inferno of wood, boxing them in flame on three sides. Wulfwryn’s eyes burned. 

But then she looked further, drawn first to the looming figure in a billowing red robe. Something in just the figures presence sent a shiver down her spine, prickled the skin of her arms and the hair on the back of her neck. 

Then Amdir--standing as if at any moment his legs would go out from beneath him, shoulders hunched and back to them. 

“Amdir,” she couldn’t help the relief that spread cool through her voice, how she strode forward to wrap her fingers around his wrist. “I was so worried you had fallen--” 

He turned his cheek to her and her words died in her throat. Throughout the last few days, even with Celadine’s sweetly offered billberry tea and the use of the athelas’ healing properties, Amdir’s face had been shadowed by pain and shining with fever. But there was a darkness marring his face, something sick hollowing out his eyes and cheeks. “...Amdir?” 

Some conversation had been going on in the background, some shouting match that was little more than white noise buzzing in her ears as their eyes met and held. 

Nothing recognizable lay in his eyes. She may as well have been staring at a stranger, or at Amdir from several miles away. 

The red-robed creature’s voice hissed across them--more like a chilled breeze hissing than something that could be called a voice. _"Enough talk. You’re Amdir is now a servant of Mordor. Come, Dúnadan..."_

“Yes Master.” As if his movements weren’t his own, Amdir went to turn away, meeting the resistance of her fingers tightening around his wrist. 

“_Don’t_. Don’t listen to that thing!” 

She did not know what would happen if he went--but her heart sank deep into a chill at the thought. The smoke was thickening around them, stealing breath and obscuring those around her, even Amdir, though only an arms’ length sat between them. 

“I must.” Even his voice was different, rasping and distant with more than just sickness. His eyes looked at her but he wasn’t _looking_, she might as well have not been there. 

She had seen madness take over men before. This danced the line of a different breed of madness, born from the cold wound in his side from an evil blade. The force in her voice shocked even her. “_No_. _Listen_, really listen to me. _Stay_. Let me help you. I _will _help you.” 

Perhaps for a moment, though it might have been a trick of her eyes, he hesitated, something like wistfulness flitting through his expression. 

_“Dúnadan,” _hissed across them again and Amdir shuddered. “_Come_.” 

The look he turned on her was pained, almost human again. “I....I can’t.” 

A warning, shrieking hiss from the darkness inside the robes and with a cruel twist of his arm Amdir ripped himself away, staggering into the smoke and into the cold embrace of the beast. 

In a flashing of swords in the darkness the remaining Blackwolds fell upon them, Cob striking down the elder Brackenbrook with a vicious strike. 

His son’s cry rose high in the smokey air, drowned out only by Wulfwryn’s long, furious and wordless cry from the smoke that she had run into after the creature and it’s prey, broken off as the smoke’s stranglehold finally brought her to her knees. 


	17. Day 17: Into the West

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 17. “There is just something about them/her/him.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: Implied Character Death and Grief
> 
> NOTE: this is a bad ending to Day 7 and alternate ending to Day 13

**\--**

There had always been something about him that had grounded her, kept her safe from the desire to throw herself into throngs of danger just to keep it from reaching others. Perhaps how he wrapped his arms around her and brought with that embrace the realization that she had more to stay for, more to bolster her preservation of self when swords were drawn. 

In her fevered dreams he wrapped his arms around her, murmuring things she could not understand against her hair, a warm reassurance. For he had always been safe--safe and warm and welcoming. 

Other voices drifted around her, other touches trying to draw her away but she clung tight to the one that she knew. The one that wouldn’t bring her harm. 

The one who’s face she smiled up towards, took the hand he offered, and fell into the warmth and light of his embrace.

\--

A steady ebb and flow of water rushed against the pale grey flanks of the boat, softly whooshing in and our like sighing breath. The breeze brushed against Raenor’s face, stirring and drifting through loose strands of his hair. 

Unseeing and unbothered by the tickling touch, he stared across the expanse of the water, the sun shining across it, the dark sweep of land fading in the distance. How far now was the form of a sweeping white city? How far now would the tie connecting him and her be stretched before it snapped? 

It didn’t matter now, the distance it could hold. It had already been cruelly cut. 

_“I am bound here.” _he had said once. _“Where she goes, I will follow. I cannot bear to leave.”_

That which had bound him was no longer here, no longer drawing him from the refuge of elves day in and day out. Nothing kept him on the shores of Arda, not when he had ridden into the white city itself to find only a memory waiting for him. 

Her hand had been cold in his, her chest still beneath his forehead and breath silent around the violent emotion that had left him crumbled next to her under the shadow of her allies. 

There had always been something about her, some burning inferno of life that seemed as though it would be impossible to snuff out. To find it resting in ash, without even the smallest glowing ember, was too much to bear.

Even beneath the trees of Rivendell, seeming to dim and shrivel as the grace of the elves ebbed further and further, that should have offered some solace, he had sat and desperately waited for time to stop flowing around him, for the word to stop turning. 

If he couldn’t follow then the world could have the grace to pause and give him a moment of blissful nothing.

_“Ke·tuluva?” _he had finally been asked and he had nodded in silence, taking the pack heavy upon his shoulders and walking the long road to the water. 

And there, at the edge of the boat he sat, head pillowed on his arm, eyes unfocused with the cheeks beneath them damp and his heart laying broken in his chest as the currently guided them to the West. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Ke·tuluva: “Will you come?” 


	18. Day 18: Secrets Kept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 18: "Secrets? I love secrets." 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags:N/A

The night was quiet in the elven refuge, glowing softly like a gem hidden in the folds of the North Downs. 

Head pillowed in Raenor’s lap as he fiddled with the strings of the lute, listening to him singing softly, she was just beginning to fall into a dozing sleep when he spoke. 

“Wulfwryn?” she hummed at Raenor’s voice, not opening her eyes. “Do you want to know a secret?” 

Squinting one eyes open she looked up at him, blinking both eyes open at the mischief she found there. “Secrets? I love secrets.” 

“Perfect, ready?” at her nod, he grinned and said, “_Melinyel.” _

For a long moment she paused, running the word over and over in her head. It wasn’t one that she knew well, though she had heard Raenor murmur it on more than one occasion. _ “_Ma-lin-yel.” she sounded out, making a face at Raenor’s amusement as she butchered the word. “I don’t know that one.” 

“That’s what makes it secret.” 

Lifting her head from his lap, she rolled to prop herself up on one elbow, unable to keep the curious indigence from her voice. “_Raenor_! Now I’m curious. How am I supposed to figure it out?” 

His voice was lilted by laughter. “You aren’t meant to know, that’s what a secret means.” 

Curiosity was going to eat away at her, she could already feel it humming in her mind as she tried to remember any word that might hold relevance to that one. But no meaning appeared in her mind. “I don’t know what that word means at all.” 

Smirking, he nodded out towards the door. “There are many elves out there you could ask.” 

“_Or_,” Drawing out the word she pouted her lips. “You could just tell me and spare us all the pain.” 

“Absolutely not.” he shook his head, looking far too amused for his own good. “This is far better.” 

Fine. If he wanted to be like that then she could play his game. “If I guess will you tell me?”

His sigh was long suffering. “If you manage to guess right.”

Rocking up onto her knees, she thought for a moment. “Hm...you’re secretly a troll?”

His brows drew together in a thoroughly amused look. “Funny, but not even close.”

The face she made at him was met in return and she giggled without meaning to. It was far too easy to lose herself around him. “Alright...you hate me.” 

He barked out a soft clap of laughter. “Not quite.” 

Nodding, she dragged over lower lip between her teeth. “You don’t hate me, that’s good.” 

“Correct, but now what I said.” He caught the shove that she aimed at him, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. In turn she tugged hard, grinning as he overbalanced, toppling into her. Her back to the ground, his arms braced on either side of her, he made a face. “You did that on purpose.” 

As she twined her arms around his neck she blinked innocently. “Perhaps...will you tell me now?” 

Though his eyes darted around her face, hovering at her lips, his smile was languid still. “Still no. Though you are persistent.” 

Huffing, she rolled her eyes. “_Fine._ You like me.” 

“Close, but no.” Raenor laughed softly. “You’re rather bad at this _meldanya.” _

_That _was a word she had heard before, an endearment so far as she could place it, murmured against her skin under moon or soft lamplight. Even with amusement dancing through the word it still sent a shiver through her. 

“Aha!” she boldly proclaimed, laughter of her own bubbling in her words. “You love--” 

Her laughter died in this shift in his expression--his ears flicked and eyes blinking wide. That couldn’t be it...she couldn’t have blundered her joking way into the true answer. Voice softening, she asked, “You love me...?” 

A light flush spreading across his face, he nodded ever so slightly, voice almost too soft to be heard. “_Melinyel.” _

In the long stretch that followed as her mind went blank, she felt him begin to pull away and without thinking she forcefully pulled him back down to her, crashing her lips into his. With a surprised noise, he sank into it, his eyes drifting closed even as a silent question passed between them. 

When she let the distance fall between them again, short of breath, she gasped out, “I love you too.” as if it was just now a dawning realization that had lay dormant for a long awhile, and Raenor captured the giddy laugh that followed with his mouth pressing over hers once again. 


	19. Day 19:Ghosts and Ghouls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 19. “Yes, I admit it, you were right.” 
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Warnings/Tags: Mentions of character death/starving/hypothermia 

\--

Wulfwryn rested her head between Raenor’s shoulders, her arms tightening around his waist with a sigh as they left the fogs and waving wheat maze of Wistmead behind. Her body hurt, bruised and sore from the fall she had taken earlier as her horse had spooked and bolted at the rustling dried boughs of the trees and the Shire-bred horse had been too shaken to make the ride back. 

For his credit, Raenor hadn’t yet said what he must have been thinking as they left behind the ruins of the old and haunted farmhouse, instead just humming at her sigh. “Are you alright love? That fall looked like it hurt.” 

“You can say it you know,” she mumbled into his cloak. When she felt the inquisitive sound reverberate through him she added, “I admit it, you were right. About this whole ghost nonsense.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he replied with upmost diplomacy, as if he hadn’t been the one to suggest that there was something entirely off about the situation the Boffin clan had dragged them into. “Except that I think it was an absolutely awful end to meet.” 

Alone, starved or frozen to death in their hobbit hole during the worst winter and famine the Shire had seen in it’s existence two-hundred years ago. She shuddered at the thought, wrapping herself as close as she could to Raenor with the saddle getting in the way. “It was...that poor man.” 

They rode alone in silence from Wistmead to back into the green hills of Hobbiton-Bywater, finally resting their horse in Hobbiton proper. Raenor’s hands on her waist steadied her as she slid down from the back of the horse and she let herself rest back against his chest with a tired huff. “Next time I suggest we take a break to come to a festival?” 

“We stick with the haunted burrows and avoid the deathly spectral investigations?” he supplied, kissing her softly when she tilted her head back with a frown. 

“I _suppose_.” she sighed, drawing the energy to step away from him, just to turn on her heel and rest her forehead against his chest. “I’ve had my full share of ghost and ghouls of the hobbit variety.” Cardboard cutouts and interloping Barrow-spirits were nothing on those that had walked the Barrow-Downs or the Lone Lands and even still--

Raenor nestled his face in her hair and she heard his laugh deep in his chest. “I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with that. Let’s try and find somewhere to rest for the night and we’ll ride out in the dawn.”


	20. Chapter 20: Amdir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 19. “You could talk about it, you know?”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

\--

“You could talk about it, you know?” 

Wulfwryn glanced to her left, brows drawing up when she found Amdir stirred from restless sleep and looking straight at her. “I have a great many things I could talk about and I don’t have a clue as to which you’re referring to.” 

Propping himself up onto an elbow with a wince and a grimace, Amdir was in enough of a good humor to chuckle. 

Since finally arriving in Archet a few days prior his condition had slowly been worsening, fever gripping his body and some manner of terrors plaguing his sleep. When Strider had disappeared earlier this morning, citing urgent business he had to take care of prior to her doing any more work for the townspeople he had told her not to expect much activity from his fellow ranger, just to make sure that he still had breath. 

While his face was drawn with pain, eyes glassed and cheeks bright from the sickness that gripped him, the ranger was more alert now than she had seen him since the evil blade had cut him. “You indeed seem to be a woman of many stories and any would be worth listening to I imagine, but my reference was to whatever it is that bothers you.” 

Rolling her eyes, she turned back to her cloak, yanking the needle and thread through the tear with more force than strictly necessary. Though his pretty words made a strange little feeling take up root in her chest, if this was some ploy to get some more fodder as to why she was an idiot--getting herself caught by brigands and thrown into helping an ailing town like some sell sword--then she wanted no part of it. “Just as with talking, I have a great many things that bother me.” 

“You’re rather adept at dodging my question. I only wanted to know what brought you here.”

“I just don’t see why you’d find that an interesting topic of conversation.” she said suspiciously, not even sure herself why her guard was on high alert. Did her actions truly leave her that guilty? Did she need to defend them so? She thought she didn’t question her choice to leave her post at Gondor and yet...

Amdir held up a hand in a gesture of peace. “At ease, Wulfwryn, you simply seem to carry a great weight on your shoulders and a sadness in your eyes. I thought perhaps you might want to share that burden.” 

She looked back over at him, finding nothing mocking in his eyes at all. “It’s not a story I wish to be spread.” 

His smile, ever so slight, was wry. “If you do not believe that I wouldn’t share it then at least know that you tell your story to a dying man.” 

A chill went through her at the implication and she scowled, eyes sharpening. “Don’t say that. I’ll tell you the damn reason, but not because you’re dying.” 

“That wasn’t a ploy to trick you into telling me,” Amdir blinked, voice completely calm. “Simply a likely truth.” 

Not if she had any say or power in the matter. “Enough of that, be quiet and listen.” 


	21. Day 21: Longing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 21: “Change is annoyingly difficult.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**\--**

Night was falling across the levels of Minas Tirith, shadows stretching across the streets and darkening gleaming white stone to grey. Sconces along the walls had been lit, giving off soft light as Wulfwryn slipped into her small home, closing the door behind her to total darkness. 

It took a moment of fumbling until she lit the fixtures in her own space so that she could see, sighing and rubbing a hand across her tired eyes as first took the helm from her head and rested it on a side table and then pulled the black cloth that covered the lower half of her face down her neck, taking what felt like her first unobstructed breath in hours. 

The heavy black cloak followed, folded neatly and tucked on the table beneath the helm. It had become a ritual, removing her armor piece by piece and caring for it with a delicate hand. Sinking into the rickety wooden chair, taking cloth and textured pad to the metal until it gleamed like new again. Placing it all back on its wrack for the next day’s use. 

It was a new routine, well, an old routine that she was now just taking up again. Certain things were different as a Citadel Guard Captain rather than just a guard, but the motions remained largely the same. 

And yet change was still annoyingly difficult. It was harder than she would have guessed to settle into her new routine, the simple safety of Minas Tirith the entire...mundane nature her days had taken on. 

Maybe it was the fear of inadequacy, of being named as untrustworthy for the way she had turned her back on the Stewards that had plagued her before she’d been knighted into her title. But her king or her guards had offered no sign of harboring any ill thought towards her. More than not there was a reverence that came with hearing all that she had done. 

It could not be the guards under her care that made her so restless--the men and women that had stepped up to become loyal guardians of their city and their king were some of the best people that Wulfwryn had the honor of knowing. 

Once she stopped fooling herself she knew exactly what kept her unable to settle and what kept her eyes looking out across the fields towards distant lands beyond. 

It was Raenor that she ached for, no change was quite so difficult as losing him to Rivendell, of going from constant partners to writing only in letters. 

It was his laugh and music that she missed most when she found herself turning to make a joke or some smart comment, when her words fell flat among her new fellows. When the night chill swept across her bed it was his warmth she wanted next to her, his arms heavy around her. It was his hands and lips that she wanted on her when loneliness gripped her like a vice. 

He had told her that he would return, if that was what she wanted of him. But could she ask that? For him to turn away from his home, his people, just to come to hers? Where he would have none that understood the intricacies and struggles of his elven existence so completely but the lady Arwen?

Yes, she had written to him. Told him that she stilled loved him and missed him, but never how fully. 

When she wandered over to the small writing desk she had pushed into the corner of her room, opening a drawer and laying a fresh letter in front of her what was she meant to write?

_I miss you so much that at times it hurts. Sometimes I wonder if staying here was a mistake and if I gave up too much just to chase the duty I thought I’d left behind. I need you because nothing here feels right now._

Leaning back in her chair, Wulfwryn turned her eyes to the ceiling, working the plaits from her hair, fingers loosening the tightly bound strands, as she thought and snarled at herself and thought some more. 

When she turned back to the blank page, dipping her quill in ink, she wrote only the surface of her thoughts. She couldn’t damn him to her side, not now, not when she could wait til he was able to visit and learn to be content with that. 

She could be content. 

Laying out the sheet to dry she rested her elbows on the table, resting her face in her hands. 

Perhaps she could. 


	22. Day 22: Fornost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Number: 22.“We could have a chance.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: Mentions of injury

**\--**

She didn’t know how it happened. 

The Fields of Fornost were dark and foggy, swept with a chill that didn’t seem to be from the wind, swarming with aimless shades drifting. They were vicious things, triggered by the slightest movement near them and hard to beat off. She had learned that hard way that even if her sword’s make had cut through spirits in the Barrow Downs the shades here were of tougher make. If it hadn’t been for Raenor’s magic, the one thing that seemed to be dispelling them the most, then she didn’t want to think of where they’d be. 

But it did make them angry. 

She could see him in her peripheral, feel him somewhere close to her, pushing back shades with chants that seemed to bring a glow of magic to his hands, to the knives flashing in them, and shouts that almost shook the ground beneath their feet. Wulfwryn didn’t pretend to know anything about magic but whatever Raenor drew on it was honed, powerful, and the shades shied away from it. 

He was breathing hard in sharp, quick gasps as the shades started to dwindle in number, his skin drenched in sweat just as hers was even in the chill of the air. But he swayed, almost imperceptibly on his feet and, swiping her sword through an encroaching shade, she scurried to his side. “Raenor?” 

When he looked over at her, her eyes widened. Blood was dripping from a steadily from his nose, though Raenor didn’t seem to notice or be bothered by it. “Whoa okay hey--” 

His eyes fixed on something behind her, a strangled, “Behind!” all the warning she needed to whip around to face a fast approaching shade. She heard Raenor start to draw on another spell, saw the shade fix its attention on him. 

It took her a split second before he stumbled, knocking into her, to hear his words slur and falter, the shade manifesting from where it had been beginning to fade. “No!” Some protective instinct, not driven by logic, made her step in front of where she hoped Raenor was and throw her shield up. 

She felt the cold whisper of the shade pass through the outer edge of her shield, frost ghosting across the metal, a split second before Raenor’s weight stumbled fully into her her back. Dropping her shield she turned, catching his weight and following as his knees buckled. The shade was already floating away. 

“No, no, no,” she seized Raenor’s jaw to lift his head perhaps with more force than necessary, her other hand finding the pulse strong in his neck despite the sharp breaths she could still feel from him. 

“Stay with me.” 

The fear that had gripped her sent her head spinning and her hands were shaking as she found the chillingly cold spot on his robes where the shade must have raked through him. She hadn’t managed to protect him. 

They were close to Trestlebridge but they had no horses--those they had taken had been of the Ranger’s stock and had trotted back up the path towards their stables as soon as they’d dismounted. Raenor wasn’t heavy but...it would be slow. 

“Oh what did you _do_?” she murmured, crouching down to fit her shoulder under his and sling his arm around her shoulders. She knew nothing of magic, she had little contact with it outside of the likes of Gandalf the Grey’s old and ancient power. 

By the time they stumbled into Trestlebridge she was bearing nearly all of his weight, her shoulders screaming from the pull. Somewhere along the main road any remaining awareness had given out and along with it his legs. But a cold shivering had started in him, one that Wulfwryn watched with a fearful eye. 

If the town healer hadn’t been so kind as to take one look at them and usher them inside one of the still-standing buildings, effectively killing the frantic demand for help that had been building in her throat, then Wulfwryn had no doubt she would have banged on every door until _someone _had. 

When had she started being willing to go to such lengths for the elf now laid out beneath piles of covers? When had she decided that the only place for her to be was sitting cross-legged on the bed next to him, watching to make sure that he chill didn’t worsen?

The healer--an older, quick-witted woman who had insisted Wulfwryn owed her nothing except to call her Maggie instead of ma’am--had assured her that this was very unlikely to be the thing that killed an elf. That it looked like a common case of a mage pushing themselves too far compiled with a shade’s chilling touch. 

The latter, she had been told, was common these days. It wracked the body for a few hours, wearied them out, and then left as quick as it came so long as the poor soul wasn’t left out in the cold along with it or sick. 

It didn’t keep her from worrying, or from thinking of all the worst things that could happen. From pulling the blankets closer around him as she uncurled herself to stoke the fire burning in the hearth. 

As she settled back next to him she sighed, eyes drifting across him. For lack of anything to do aside from stare at the wall--a largely unappealing thought--she took to trying to untangle the shining cuffs from the braids in his hair--tangled from the fight. 

“You’re making me think Raenor.” she scolded softly. “I don’t like that.” 

The first cuff she set aside, deftly untangling the braid it had cinched. “For a moment I thought I was going to lose you.” 

Their confessions from the elven refuge only nights before weighed on her mind. “After what you told me...that would’ve been rude.” 

Her hands slowed as her thoughts quickened, racing with all things she could say and couldn’t dare to say until finally they settled. “And I think...I think we could have a chance. For that. I want a chance.” 

She cleared her throat, picking back up with running her fingers through a particularly snared section of hair. “But only if you can avoid scaring me half to death.” 


	23. Day 23: Limits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Number: 23. “You can’t give more than yourself.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**\--**

If Wulfwryn had not admitted to herself that the shining banners of the elves cresting over the rise to Minas Tirith sent a thrill of joy through her bright enough to bring tears to her eyes, then it would have been a great dishonesty to herself. 

Over a year had passed since she had said goodbye to Raenor on the same stone she stood on now, pulling him to her with a fervent promise to see him again and weeks since his last letter. 

The elven caravan itself, riding from Rivendell, came to see to Arwen and prepare to welcome Aragorn and Arwen’s first child into the world. Raenor, she knew, came to see her. And so she, in impatient fashion, had walked her rounds passed this spot all morning--and at least twice every day preceding this one--until the guards under her command had asked if she was alright or if something was approaching. 

She very well was alright, near buzzing with an excitement that she doubted they had seen from her in a long while, even if each moment that Raenor was close but still _so far _drove the ache for him deeper and deeper. 

A year was a mere blink for an elf she imagined, but for her it had dragged like an eternity.

So when she finally caught sight of the banners, waving in the breeze and held high above the gleaming grey horses of Rivendell, she nearly leapt into the air and squealed in pure delight. 

“They elves are arriving!” she called instead in the voice of a captain instead of a relieved significant other. “Send a message to open the gates and someone inform the king and queen.” 

Recalled to the King’s side in his personal guard she could do nothing but stand at attention, as the elves filtered into the main courtyard, stealing as many glances as she dared at the only one who truly drew her attention. It was short work to dismount from their horses and hand them off to the stable hands, who all looked revered at the chance to handle elven stock, but the true test of her patience came with the formalities and ceremony in greeting that followed. 

It went on and on, seeming to drag forever as she forged herself not to fidget. When Raenor caught her eyes and gave her a secretive smile she had to thank the fact that she wore the cloth over her mouth and nose for she wasn’t certain she could’ve hit her smile else wise. 

Just when it started to become unbearable, being so close but unable to reach for him, she was released from her post and in the mingling crowd that formed she made a beeline for him. 

When she finally slammed into him, crashing her lips into his, he stumbled back a step before his arms settled tightly around her waist, rocking them back and forth in awkward, waddling steps until he found his balance again. 

His palm slid warm to cup her cheek, thumb brushing across her cheekbone when he pulled back, just long enough to murmur “_Meldanya,” _with enough reverence and affection to truly bring tears to her eyes before he was kissing her again. 

“I’ve missed you.” she put into words, murmured between them when finally they had been able to steal away for more privacy. Their presences disappearing hadn’t been noticed, she was certain, not when there were other festivities of far more interest to pay mind to. 

But what did the feasts and gatherings matter when she could be here, pressed close to Raenor again, while his hand traced the features of her face with gentle care like he was detailing her into his memory again. She could have drifted off like this, content with just feeling him next to her, but his gentle touch paused and she peeked open her eyes to find his laden with worry. 

“Wulfwryn, are you well?” 

“Hm?” at the sudden shift in his expression, worry enough to hurt, she sat up, brows drawing together. “I am fine, love, why would you think otherwise?” 

When he didn’t reach for her again she reached down and intertwined their fingers, sighing. “Raenor...” 

“You look...tired...worn.” He admitted finally, something pained taking an edge in his voice. 

She didn’t know why at first why the thought of her being sick would pain him so viciously or why it would incite such a strong reaction until--

Oh. _Oh_. 

He was afraid of losing her, after being so far from her with little idea of what was happening. A fear that he had been able to put aside when they had been traveling together was resurfacing. 

“I’m alright.” she soothed, running her hands over his shoulders. “I promise. This work is just difficult.” 

He made a unhappy noise, still not convinced, and she couldn’t help but smile softly. “You worry too much about me.” 

It was true, her work was wearing on her. If she allowed herself to be completely, openly honest, she had taken on too much. Taken too much on for others--jobs that could have been covered by the guards under her command...if not for one’s ailing husband, another’s newborn children. She did not have anyone relying on her, so she could take on what other’s couldn’t. She could bear that weight on her shoulders, she was strong enough. 

Her expression must have been a confession in itself as Raenor sighed, “Wulfwryn...you cannot give more than yourself to this city. You cannot drain yourself in the name of what you call your duty.” 

How was it that he could read her so well even after so long away? Was she really that much of an open book to him? She wasn’t able to muster more than a tired irritation. “I _know_.” 

“Do you?” he brushed a fallen strand of hair from her face, falling back around her shoulders from when he had tugged it from its plait, and tucked it behind her ear. “I don’t think you do sometimes.” 

Frowning, she glowered over at him as seriously as she could muster while still on the warm high of him being there. “I _do_.” She just didn’t listen. 

She didn’t close her expression off enough. “What makes them more worthy of rest? Of time away from their duties?” 

It slipped out before she could bite it down, in a soft murmur that she realized she had said only after Raenor stiffened beside her. “Someone to come home to.” 

Starting to shake her head vehemently, her words stumbled over each other in their haste. “No, no that isn’t what I meant...I wasn’t, it isn’t a fault of yours or mine or--” 

“Wulfwryn,” she didn’t hear him the first time. “Wulfwryn, _meldanya,” _nor the second time. “_Wulfwryn_.” finally he pulled her to him, pressing his lips over hers to cut off her ramblings. “Hush.” 

Drawing her lower lip between her teeth, she stemmed the apology still building in her and he offered her another smile. “It is lonely, being apart, more lonely than I ever could’ve anticipated. Perhaps there is some way...some way to remedy that.” 

Already she regretted pushing it, bringing it up and being so openly and painfully honest with him, breaking the warmth that had settled between them upon his arrival. She could see the gears turning in his head but...not tonight. She didn’t want to talk _what-ifs _and possibilities tonight. “Please,” she said softly. “can we just let this go for tonight?” 

Maybe it was selfish, just wanting to wrap herself in his presence again like a blanket and forget their realities, to just go back to the nights when they had been able to just exist with each other. 

Yet Raenor willingly gave, settling back against the headboard of her bed, pulling her down until her head lay against his shoulder and he could murmur into her hair, “For another day.” 

“Another day.” she agreed softly, turning her face into his neck and breathing him in. 


	24. Day 24: Demands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Number: 24. “Patience… is not something I’m known for.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: T/M (depending)
> 
> Warnings/Tags: Quite suggestive if you will ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

\--

One thing she had learned about Raenor was that he liked to admire the finer points and beauty of things, the details. Intricate carving work done on instruments, in architecture, other such material things. 

She had learned quickly after their first meeting that this fell in regards to her as well: given the chance he wanted to explore and know every inch of her. It was endearing really, reverent hands running over her and kisses pressed following the path of his hands. 

Everything he did was measured, careful, _deliciously _planned.

Pressing her back, kissing her breathless, taking her teasing and turning it back on her tenfold with a glint in his eyes and a half smile. Sending elegant elven words she didn’t know dancing across her skin until she arched into his voice. Always gentle to the raging demand of her.

There was a point, however, where he had her strung out enough like putty in his hands that her patience wore thin. 

“Raenor,” Wulfwryn did not _beg_, she never begged, but she did forcefully demand, digging her fingers into his shoulders and trying to all but tug him to her. “You’re taking too long.” 

His chuckle was a rumble across her skin, his words a whisper light enough to raise goosebumps as he kissed a path to her throat. “Patience, _meldanya_.” 

“Patience,” she growled, though she let her head fall back as his lips found the hollow of her throat, following up to kiss along her jawline. “is not something I’m known for.” 

“Perhaps we should change that.” he teased and she very near scoffed. 

Truly he was unbearable sometimes. “Perhaps we should,” she murmured.

It was an easy movement really, born from the strength of fighting and heavy armor, to one moment beneath him and the next over him. He hardly looked displeased, though a subtle amusements passed across his features. 

“Ah, ah,” His hands made to come up and she snatched them, slamming them down onto the sheets above his head. “absolutely not.” she scowled. “It’s my turn now.” 

The smirk he gave her, crooked and completely at ease, made her heart flip and desire spark almost painfully in her twice over. “Alright,” his voice dropped and he lifted a brow. “Do as you will.” 

Damn him. Damn him and his voice and _that _expression all but daring her to the point where she couldn’t even think straight, let alone when he moved like _that _and added, “I have a few suggestions.” 


	25. Day 25: Respite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt Number: 25. “I could really eat something.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

\--

“I could really eat something,” Wulfwryn declared, even as she flopped backwards into the feathery, fluffy embrace of the bed. Above her the colored glass and latticework of the ceiling made it feel like her head was spinning. Or maybe it was the hunger, or just simple exhaustion. 

There were a lot of things she could choose from to explain away the feeling and her troubles. 

But returning to Rivendell for a brief respite, if a Council with the elves and who knows who else could count as that, was already promising to ease some of those troubles away. At the very least she had seen buckets of tension melt from Raenor’s shoulders as soon as they had started their descent into the valley. 

No matter how much he claimed he didn’t mind the road or miss his home, she had seen the worry ease from his expression, had seen the animated way he greeted those that he knew and those that he considered friends. 

She wondered briefly if that was what returning to Gondor and Minas Tirith would feel like. If he would be able to look at her and see such a settled sense of belonging. 

It was a thought that touched her mind only briefly, pushed away by how comfortable she was and how the aches in her muscles pulsed and eased as she let herself relax. 

“I’m sure there’s food still inside the main hall, or at least leftovers in the kitchen.” she could hear amusement in Raenor’s voice and assumed he was looking over at her from somewhere across the room. She didn’t bother turning her head to check. “It’s not so late that everything would be cleared.” 

The noise she made was caught somewhere between a frustrated groan and a tired whine and she heard him laugh outright, the sound deepening when she scrunched up her nose. “_Oh, _but that requires walking and we’ve done far too much of that.” 

“Oh the horrors of walking for food.” Raenor teased and for a moment she considered throwing one of the ornate little throw pillows by her shoulder at him. Even when she had it gripped in her hand she decided it was truly too much effort to lift her arm, heavy still with chain and gauntlet and far too many other things, and let it drop. 

“You’re awful.” 

“Taking off your armor requires getting up anyway,” he reminded her, all too obviously. “It’s just a matter of getting out the door.” 

She truly hated his logic at times. “Yes but you see I’m also rather _tired, _so truly I don’t know what is more important. Sleep or food.” 

“Well I’m not sleeping next to you if you’re still in armor. I’ll get my eye poked out, or wake up with inexplicable bruises.” 

Well she couldn’t have _that_. Wulfwryn sat up with a grown, brushing stray hair from her eyes and huffed at Raenor. “Fine, I will do away with the armor.” 

A mischievous look was gleaming in his eyes, his smile a little too lopsided to mean anything good. “If you cannot bear to walk the rest of the way I could carry you like a damsel in distress.” 

“I’m a damsel, I’m in distress, but not _that _distressed.” Wulfwryn snorted before holding her hands out and giving them a shake. “But could you help me up instead?” 


	26. Day 26: Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 26: "You keep me warm"
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

\---

“You keep me warm.” 

Fever was an awful thing and for a moment she considered letting what had to be mindless words slip by her like running water, but beside her Amdir was insistent. His chuckle was deep, worn but still with life in it yet.

“I am not fooling with you Wulfwryn.” 

If his harsh words didn’t echo in her mind, _“you tell your story to a dying man.” _then maybe she would’ve been able to scoff at him and turn away completely, writing it off as some ridiculous line. 

Instead she looked over at him, setting aside the sword that she gave all of her attention to sharpening this morning. Though they had changed scenery, sitting on some old supply crates by the training space in Archet, the short distance from the Mad Badger taken with Amdir leaning heavily on her shoulder, he looked just as wretched as he had the past few days. 

Though he tried to seem more upbeat, she could see it in the way he stiffly held himself up instead of easing back against the crates, he still cradled his wounded arm and shoulder close to his chest with ginger care. If he noticed the way his veins were standing out strong in his pallor-ed skin like she did, he didn’t say it. 

“Half the time I don’t know what you mean.” 

“Because you never let me finish,” Amdir jested lightly in return. “Will you listen?” 

Curiosity was going to get the better of her regardless and she gave the slightest of nods. The careful way he teased her always had a warmth to it, something in it that seemed to lighten both their hearts when she let her guard down long enough to let it. “I’ll listen.” 

With a satisfied nod, letting himself ease against the crate to his back, Amdir offered her a rare half smile though. “I was being quite serious.” his half smile faded. “With...well, things, it’s getting cold. A bone-aching chill constantly, though trust me--I know that summer heats the air around us yet, I haven’t lost my wits--and there are times when it’s all I can focus on. With everyone constantly fussing...I find that it worsens.” 

When he paused she made a little noise for him to continue, eyes dropping to her lap with the same rising queasiness that came whenever she thought too hard about the sickness that they couldn’t seem to cure and what it could be leading to. 

“And then you come along, whether to say hello or to stay and it’s like you bring that warmth back. You joke, you tease and smile and more often than not it sends the chill retreating, if but for a time. For a little while, I can forget.” 

She could share the same insistence she made every time, _We’re going to find a way to combat it. Just given time_. But something in his eyes stopped her. 

“I’m glad I can do that.” she finally said, meeting his eyes again. “I don’t want to treat you’re dead already or made of glass. So I won’t.” 

“See, there it is.” his smile returned, though when he turned his eyes to the sky with a shake of his head, it was almost with a touch of exasperation. “That stubborn willpower. I swear, if Death ever comes for me he’ll have to fight you first. I don’t know if he’ll win.” 

Though she laughed, ducking her head down once again, there was a painful edge to it. If she could fight away whatever was taking Amdir from her, from _them_, then she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t do it in a heartbeat. 


	27. Day 27: The Black Gate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt number: 26.“ Can you wait for me?”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Rating: Gen
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this got a lot longer than I thought it would....enjoy this triple sized fic?

**\---**

“Can you wait for me?” He’d asked her, when they’d still been within the safe walls of Minas Tirith, when she had been doing the straps of her armor, while she’d twisted her hair up as he’d seen her do millions of times over. 

With a hole of dread eating away at him, even as he handed her her shield. “Please, wait for me. On the other side of this battle.” 

He was being kept aside, kept with the healers out the outskirts of the fighting to treat what was sure to be a bloodbath. Wulfwryn wasn’t so lucky. To throw her in front of the Black Gate made him feel sick to think about, brought shivers to his hands and cold dread blocking his throat. 

Taking her shield from him, she reached her other hand, the metal of her gauntlet cold against his skin, to rest against the side of his face. “I’m going to try.” and through she smiled it didn’t meet her eyes. She wouldn’t be giving him baseless promises. 

He didn’t want her baseless promises, not really. Ducking his head down he pressed a firm kiss to her lips even as the clanging bell calling them all to to the formations of war until finally he found the courage to let her go. 

Yet when they split beneath the gate of the White City, one to the throng of armored men and woman forming, one to the desperately small grouping of healers, it was with a sort of reluctance. 

“I’m going to see you again.” Wulfwryn said firmly, pulling her helm on, the shadow of it hiding her eyes. “I will.” 

“Fight well. Remember to wait for me. I’ll be here.” Raenor called in return before her back was turned and she was marching off to formation. Struggling to take a breath deep enough to calm his pounding heart, he watched her until he could see her no more. 

\--

Wulfwryn was drowning. In the feeling of bodies crashing around her, crashing into her. In the foul stench of Mordor’s endless army, in the sulfuric, acrid wash of Mount Doom’s waste across the battlefield. 

She had been on the front lines, had heard every line that her rightful king had used to rally them, only for any organized lines to crumble within moments of the fighting’s start. They were surrounded, that much she had heard shouted. They kept coming, she heard in her ear. 

The ground was hard beneath her back when something slammed into her with all the force of a galloping horse, stealing all of her breath and making darkness dance in front of her eyes. A slavering orc, looming above her, drove its ragged sword down towards her. Feet swarmed on either side of her, someone’s booted heel knocking into her helm, blocking her in and panic flared within her for a split second before she thrust her sword up in hopes of at least batting it away. 

When that bought her a second’s time she drew on what strength she had and surged to a crouch, just enough to dispose of the creature in front of her. It fell, shrieking and hissing, only for another body--one of her fellow men--to crash into her, sending her back to the ground. 

It was dead weight on top of her and as she pushed the armored figure off of her blood slicked her armor, pulsing from a wound to his exposed neck. Though she was no stranger to fighting, the sight still brought a muffled shriek crawling up her throat. 

All around her there were people in similar states, motionless as she staggered to her feet, the screams and sobs of wounded and dying men audible over the clang of swords and shields. 

She didn’t get more than a moment to breath before creatures swarmed to her, another filling to spot of each body she cut down. It was endless, she could feel her arms shaking and her legs trembling. 

The trembling in the ground was the only sign before the screams that a troll, big and vicious and armored, had broken through their lines. For a long moment between her own fighting she couldn’t see what it was doing, couldn’t see the body it threw aside until she saw white flash of the Tree of Gondor, the flutter of red beneath a cloak. 

“No!” Her voice sounded frenzied, broken to her own ears as she threw herself through lines of their enemies, shouldering through the gridlock of fighting. It did her no good, the fighting was too thick, the ground uneven with fallen orcs and men alike. “My king!” 

What were they to do if he had fallen? If Gondor’s new line of kings had ended before it had even been able to take root? What was she to do if she lost a friend on this battlefield? A faithful ally that she had fought for and alongside? 

A furious desperation poured newfound strength into her arms, driving her sword through enemies with vicious intent. She made it a only a few, pitiful paces forward before an inhuman roar echoed across the battlefield, stopping the fighting in its tracks. Before her eyes the tower that had loomed, tall and dark, began to crumble, the glowing mass atop it falling with it until flickering out in a cloud of ash and dust. 

There was a brief moment where victorious shouts echoed around her, a cruel moment granted of celebration before it turned to shouts and terrified screams once again. 

Mordor’s army was fleeing in the wake of Mount Doom splitting itself apart behind them, spewing lava and fire and shaking the ground beneath their feet in a violent tantrum. Fleeing into the broken line of the Men of the West. 

Eyes going wide, she cast about from side to side but there was nowhere for her to go. She didn’t stand a chance when the first heavy bodied orc hit her, shouldering past in its haste to _run_. 

Armored boots hit her armor, crushed across her as she fell, battering her world into a dark nothingness that dulled even the pounding of feet. 

\--

“Easy, easy,” The sky was grey above her, ash raining down on her face as she stared blankly up for several breaths. 

_Breaths_. She could see. She could feel her breath, painful as it was, taste the sharp tang of blood in her mouth. 

A hand was pressing down lightly on her shoulder. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it and without the healers...” 

“Healers?” she murmured, trying still to take her fragmented thoughts and piece them together into a whole. Her body hurt. Each breath hurt. Why would Raenor be talking about the healer if he was one?

“Mordor’s creatures reached the healer’s encampment during the main battle. Laid waste as far as we’ve heard.” 

Everything came rushing in in sharp clarity. It was a woman’s voice talking to her, her delicate hand on her shoulder. The healers--

A pained shout was ripped from her in the violent way she sat up, rippling through her with enough force to make her keel to the side, squeezing her eyes closed. No, no she needed to go! She needed to find him! 

“Please, lay still--” 

“No!” Wulfwryn barked out between ragged breaths. She needed--she had to--

Breaking the woman’s hold on her shoulder again she forced herself to her feet, staggering and listing forward until she almost found herself pillowed on the ground once again. “I need--” she gasped futility, trying to find her bearings as the world swam around her. 

It was that way, she knew it was, and though each step felt as if it were taken with blocks tied to her feet and the world blurred around her she chose a direction she swore was right and pushed with all the strength she had towards it. 

He couldn’t be, he _couldn’t _be.

She saw the smoke first, rising from the circle of supplies and tents they had tried to prepare. Motionless bodies scattered across the ground, stillness settling across the one place that should have been untouchable. 

He was supposed to be _safe_. 

A wordless moan preceded the agony building like a violent pressure in her chest as she stumbled closer to the wreckage. Her vision swamp in front of her, blurring the destruction in front of her into formless lumps of color. 

Three steps more and her knees buckled, her heart plummeting down with them. There was no one there. Only smoke and lifeless bodied, her Raenor with all of his eternal grace spilled crimson across the ground. 

Oh how she yearned for that darkness now to slip her back into it’s loving arms, to take her away from this. Anything but this, anything bit the pain that wracked her body and the agony that was strangling her mind and heart. 

How could she have let him stay? How could she have led him here? 

A steady noise was building in her ears, a ringing that drowned out all else. Someone was touching her shoulder, gently shaking it and then a shadow was in front of her eyes, a figure falling down in front of her. 

Raising her eyes, a ragged sob broke from her, even as her hands reached up. Brushing across a familiar face, brushing past the blood that had crusted beneath his noise and over the bruise that was forming dark on his cheekbone. 

His mouth was moving, his hands warm as they cupped her face, but she couldn’t hear his words from the pounding of her heart. Giving a little shake of her head she surged forward, throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his neck. 

When his arms wrapped around her, tightly enough that her wounded body protested, and nestled his face in her hair, her world came rushing back and though words wouldn’t come to her through the tears that choked her, he seemed to understand, his arms tightening slightly around her. 

Beneath her cheek, she felt his own shoulders begin to shake and she clung to him all the tighter. 

She wasn’t going to lose him. Not today. 


	28. Day 28: Fade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 28: “Enough! I heard enough.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

\--

“Are you really planning to go through with this?” 

Raenor’s fingers curled into the coarse strands of the horse’s man, fingers brushing it’s neck before he looked over his shoulder. Nárissë was blocking the stall door, running the intricate leather of the bridle between her hands as she fixed him with a level stare. There wasn’t going to be any escaping her, no blustering by until she left him alone. They had known each other for far too long. 

“I am.” his own voice was devoid of the frustration at the constant question, the subtle fear of the unknown that his decision would bring. “I’ve made my choice.” 

“Raenor, I think what you’re doing is very rash.” Nárissë swallowed heavily and for the first time he recognized..._sadness_ heavy in her expression. “Giving up an eternity for fifty years, maybe less?” 

He found it increasingly hard to hold her eyes and turned back to his horse, fixing the girth, fiddling with the stirrups. “I’m not giving up everything. I will find you all again, even away from here.” 

“No, you won’t.” Her voice dripped with misery and truly, what did she believe that made her sound that way? She was shaking her head at him when he found himself unable to keep from looking back, her brows drawn tight together, expression bitter. “You won’t come back from her. I know you won’t, the grief will take you, easy as any sword.” 

“Enough,” Emotion was starting to build in him, he could feel the pressure behind his eyes. “Please, you have to trust me.” 

But she was merciless, unrelenting as the ocean waves on stone. “You’ve already almost lost her once! What keeps it from happening again? From truly happening? What will you do then? Hm? Look at me and tell me you’ll come back.” 

“I came back!” he snapped. He hadn’t wanted to, but he did. He had ridden back down the banks of the Ford, crossed into the protection of Rivendell at Wulfwryn’s insistence. 

“Fine,” Nárissë snapped in return, “What about when she grows old while you don’t?” 

“Stop.” A warning note took up in his voice. He’d already thought about this, he’d already lived through enough contingencies in the shelter of his own mind.

“When she starts to wither away and you can do nothing but watch?” 

“Nárissë _enough_.” 

His words to Elrond, broken as he’d begged on his knees for his kind lord to let him ride to her, echoed in his mind. He’d made his choice, no matter how much it hurt him, no matter how unintentional it had been to give Wulfwryn his heart.

Nárissë refused to give, her voice almost pleading with him now to understand _something._ “When old age takes her mind first, erasing you, and then finally her body? When you’re left alone here?” 

“Enough!” his shout rang loud enough to spook the horse next to him and he forced his voice to soften, though there was still a growling edge until finally it tripped and shattered on his last word. “I’ve heard _enough_.” 

Bowing his head, taking in a ragged breath, Raenor tried to take back his composure. From the sniffling breath of his friend, he wasn’t certain he’s succeeded. “I’ve made my choice, please, let me own it.” 

“I don’t want to lose you.” Was her near-whispered reply and it dug into his heart like a knife. “I’ve weathered thousands of years with your friendship, seen the world chance around us.” 

Yet, when he held out his hand she dropped the bridle into it, eyes welling. “I don’t want that to change.”

There were empty promises he could make, endless lies he could tell. But he could not bring himself to tell such pretty, empty words to one of his dearest friends. “I will try to keep in contact with you, you know that.” 

“To imagine you fading...wasting away...” Nárissë’s breath caught, the first tears welling over and he sighed, heart hurting. “It’s too much to bear.” 

Who could say what would happen to him when Wulfwryn was finally lost? Perhaps he would be able to dig himself from his grief, carry on and sail into the West like so many were at the war’s end. Or perhaps it would wrap him fully in its embrace, pulling him under until nothing remained.

“Then don’t imagine it.” He murmured, reaching out to wrap Nárissë’s hand in his. She clung tightly, as if that would keep him here. “Imagine me happy instead, as that is how I will be.” 


	29. Day 29: Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 29: “I’m doing this for you.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A
> 
> NOTE: Another short one today, sorry guys!

\--

“I can’t ask you to stay.” Even as the words left her mouth, Wulfwryn’s hands refused to twine themselves from Raenor’s. His offer, that he stay here, with her, echoed around her head like a voice in an empty cavern, trying to find some ear that would listen. 

It certainly wasn’t her own ears that were going to listen, it hadn’t fully sunk in yet and her first instinct was to tell him no. He couldn’t give up everything for her--if he pretended that perhaps she didn’t know what would happen to him when...well, years from now, then he was living in a very pretty dream--she couldn’t bear it if her love was what brought his downfall. 

Was that selfish of her? What was more selfish--turning him away to save her own conscience, or keeping him at her side to soothe the whims of her heart and affection?

In the night breeze, Raenor’s soft chuckle was washed away. “Who’s to say I’m only doing this for you, hm?”he asked.

After all this time she still couldn’t help the flutter in her chest at his smile, bright beneath the moonlight, his voice kept low and just for her. “This isn’t some regal sacrifice, it’s a little bit selfish too.” 

Breathing out a long breath, Wulfwryn relaxed her hold on his hands, letting her hands push back up to twine around his neck. “I to selfishly damn you.” she admitted, speaking more to his chest than his face. 

His fingers, light in their touch, slipped beneath her chin and drew her eyes up. “I did not ride here with the intent of staying on a whim.” he reminded her, a touch of sternness in his voice. “I know the choice that I’m making.” 

When he said it like that, laid out so plainly, her rebuttal sounded silly in her own ears. Of course he knew what he was doing, Raenor was the one who thought things through, who paused to consider consequences of his actions. When had she started to think herself the logical, self-restrained one? 

“I shouldn’t doubt you.” pushing up onto her toes, she kissed him softly. “Truly I’m glad that you’ll stay.” 

He rested his forehead against hers, his arms settling around her waist in a familiar weight. “I learned that there’s nowhere else I want to be.”

She laughed, pressing another kiss to the corner of his mouth. “That was horribly cliched.”

“Let me be cliched for you.” tugging her closer, he laughed when she seized the back of his tunic for balance. “Let me relish that I get to now spend my days with you.” 

They would be together now, she could finally fall asleep next to him again, wrapped in his arms. After long days it was each other they would come home to, not empty, cold rooms. 

Mundane moments in life would finally be hers; things she hadn’t known she’d wanted until she’d seen others with them. Late mornings snuggled together with nothing drawing them apart, things as simple as making dinners alongside each other. Nights tangled together. 

It would all be theirs and the mere thought sent a giddiness through her. Going up on her toes again, she pulled Raenor down to meet her in a long, excited kiss. 

“You’re staying!” Even when she pulled away it was only so that she could instead press herself flush against him in a hug, head resting on his shoulder. Once more she repeated it, as if solidifying it in her mind. “You’re _staying_.” 

One of his hands rubbed small circled on her back, the other still wrapped tight around her as he pressed a kiss to the side of her head with an, “I’m staying.” whispered across her hair. 


	30. Day 30: Eurydice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 30. “I’m with you, you know that.”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A
> 
> Note: This is heavily inspired by Hadestown’s “Wait for Me (Reprise)” and isn’t really based in anything canon lol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Another short one...this week has wrecked me x_x, sorry guys)

Unease prickled down Wulfwryn’s spine, raising the hairs on the back of her neck and her arms. She wanted to turn around, she wanted to look. Knowing that Raenor was still behind her was becoming a need just as strong as drawing breath. 

If the shade had lied? If it had taken its cruel tricks and kept him captive while sending her on a silly little trek? The shade had been playing tricks with them ever since it had taken knocked Raenor into unconsciousness just to grab her own attention. 

Shades too, it seemed, could get bored after years of lonesome wandering. 

Make it to the edges of the Fornost Fields, through dense fogs and husks of dead trees, until dawn’s rosy light rose over the hills. Only when their feet tread on green ground instead of the cracked, brittle stalks beneath them could she turn around. And supposedly she would find him behind her. 

Lose the shade’s game? The shade was far more powerful than he let on, she had seen it in Raenor’s eyes as she’d looked at him for the last time. Lose and she didn’t want to think what chaos they--she?--would be forced to face. 

Memories of dragging Raenor from these very fields, a deadly chill wracking his body, came unbidden. That couldn’t happen again. 

Panic started to tighten like a noose around her throat, shortening her breath. What if he wasn’t behind her? If she had left him in the grasp of the creature? She could swear she heard his footsteps behind her, his breath, but how would she know unless she looked? 

The urge to turn her head was almost unbearable. “Raenor?” she called out, fear pushing her voice higher, breathy. 

“Don’t turn around.” she nearly cried out at the familiar cadence of his voice floating up to her. “I’m here with you, you _know _that.” 

“You’re there.” she murmured out on a deep breath, repeating it like a mantra. “You’re there, you’re there. Right behind me.” 

It seemed to guide her, keep her feet steady and her eyes fixed forward. If she allowed herself to fall too far back into thought she could almost feel his presence behind her like a tingling at the back of her neck. 

“I’m right here.” He assured her on whispers of breath and slowly in absence of his words a quiet him took its place--faint strains of one of his elven songs. It was more a reassurance than anything she could tell herself, bracing her just as the pink light of dawn started to appear over the horizon. 

They were very nearly there. 

Her feet passed onto the springy grass that bled into the rough Fornost terrain and squeezing her eyes closed, she turned. 

Raenor walked into her, sweeping her up into his arms until they both stumbled back onto the winning side of the game several steps. With a shuddering, relieved breath, she pressed her hands to his cheeks and kissed him until all her fear and tension melted away. 

“Never again,” she murmured against his lips. “No more games of riddles, no more deals with spirits.” 

“No more,” he agreed with a tight laugh, kissing her cheek. “Absolutely no more.” 


	31. Day 31: New Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 31. “Scared, me?”
> 
> Fandom: LOTRO
> 
> Warnings/Tags: N/A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is guys! The last chapter to complete Fictober 2019 and the chapter that I have been dying to share for about two weeks~

\--

From the upper rings of Minas Tirith she could see the riders, Raenor one of them, coming from a distance. Though they were only small specks, she swore she could see the gleaming grey of his horse in the bay and chestnut stock of Gondor. 

Oh the endless scolds she would hear from Raenor when he saw her standing out here, the autumnal breeze chilly against her skin. Scolding her for coming out into the cold when she had been feeling ill over the past few weeks. No matter how much she told him it was nothing but a passing seasonal affliction, he stilled worried. In spirit of saving his poor nerves, she’d at least remembered to grab a cloak to wrap around her shoulders. 

The excitement that always came with his homecomings buzzed through her, making her movements jittery. The want to talk to him had plagued her for two days like an itch she couldn’t scratch and when he was finally near she couldn’t help but run to him, taking the last few strides in a leap.

Catching Wulfwryn, Raenor wrapped his arms around her with a bright laugh, catching the cloak that had started to fall and pulling it back around her shoulders. “It seems like you’re feeling better.” 

Nonetheless he moved back, slipping a hand under her jaw to tilt her chin up, concern and the sharp eye of a healer looking her over. Unable to help it, Wulfwryn smiled, closing her hand over Raenor’s. 

“I’m doing better, truly--oh stop, you don’t need to give me such a worried look.” Giving his hand a squeeze, she took a deep breath. “But I do have something to tell you.” 

It really had been easy to explain, once she’d passed from her refusal to admit anything was wrong to worry that it was interfering with her work. She didn’t take well to being laid up in bed feeling beneath the weather, stuck in loops of boredom. In fact the look that she’d got from the kindly nurse had been one step away from telling her that she was rather stupid. 

Raenor’s expression went from disgruntled to curiously concerned in the span of a blink and she chuckled, brushing her hands over his brow and face as if she could smooth away the worried lines. “I _told _you not to worry.” she teased before pausing. 

Was it nerves that halted her words? She wasn’t sure, though excitement did hum in her veins hand in hand with a joy she hadn’t thought she would feel. 

“I’m expecting.” the words came out on a rush of breath, spoken fast enough that she wasn’t sure he’d heard until she saw his eyes widen. Of course, he was a healer, he was no stranger to things. The rapid fire change of his expressions was almost comical, the way he studied her face unbelievably soft.

“You’re...truly?” Enough tentative hope--as if she would ever joke about such a thing--laced through his voice that she swore she felt herself melt, just a little bit. 

At just her little nod his entire being seemed to light up, her words only adding more fuel to the fire of his joy, “With child? Yes.” 

She laughed outright when his arms went around her his face burying against his shoulder while a string of muffled words fell against her skin. Carding her hand through her hair, she asked, “Raenor?” 

“This is...more than..._a almë.” _Voice thick with emotion, Raenor lifted his face from her shoulder, moving instead to press a lingering kiss to her brow. “Are you alright with this?” 

Touched by his concern, she gave a little nod, smiling as he beamed at her. “I would’ve told you otherwise--you know I don’t withhold my thoughts.” 

Choking out a laugh, he ducked his head. “Quite true.” he looked up at her once again, as if he couldn’t bear to look away in the moment. “Are you afraid?” 

There were many things she could be afraid of, perhaps she would grow to have fears as time stretched on. But just like the countless others she had faced--some far more terrifying than the unknown--she would move beyond them. 

“Scared, me?” she smiled, a teasing gleam in her eyes, and tilted her chin up to kiss him softly. “Never.” 


End file.
